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Subject:hyd. lifter adjustment
From:Mike Blotz
Date:Wed, 8 Jan 2003 08:57:34 -0700

another question for the people  Getting the 2.1 back together and have a question about the lifters. doing my pretension on the valves on my engine that has been apart for about 1.5 months. I brought the adjuster in until it touched at TDC and was going to bring it in one full turn. I know the bentley says 2 full turns. this seems super excessive to me. I planned on running it a little and then readjusting as per bentley though. 5 of the 8 are rock hard and the other 3 are spongy. I've read all the boston bob stuff on adjusting to .006 and all that. wondering what people feel. my observation at one full turn that it seems the valve is starting to open and cannot rotate the push rod on the 5 hard ones. on the three spongy one--all seems good--and I can rotate the push rod some.  Should I adjust just til they touch on all--ie zero clearance? or should I pretension some? Or should i do the .006 routine? Like I said--planned on redoing adjustment after some miles are put on it.  Remember I'm an air cooled solid lifter guy--have rebuilt tons of em. only other real experience i have with hyd lifters is in corvairs. those are adjusted with the engine running as the most common practice. back out til they clack--then tighten 2 turns. all while laying on the ground under a running engine with out valve covers and hot oil spraying on you--ahh the joys of american engineering.  anyway--love to hear people thoughts. seems like they are supposed to be hard and the soft ones have air in them (bleed down)  thanks in advance  mike

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