Jumped tooth and valve clearances

Hi All,

I'm just in the middle of doing my valve clearances (first 25k).

I've moved the crank around and it appears that the intake + exhaust cam cogs have skipped 1 tooth. The two circle indentations are one out from the coloured links when they both rotate around.

Thoughts? What should I do next? Can this be fixed by just slackening the chain and moving the cogs back a tooth?

Secondly, the intake cams are on 0.008" - i have to pull it quite tough to make it move back and forth. The exhaust is on 0.009", and tight once again. Maybe its my lack of experience but it feels like too tight a fit. Should I think of slackening it slightly?

Thanks for reading!

56TypeR said:

Can this be fixed by just slackening the chain and moving the cogs back a tooth?

Click to expand...

Technically yes, but strong chances it'll happen again so it's not advised. The main two causes are of this are

1. The chain tensioner needs replacing
2. A stretched chain

Or both the above

Either of those would allow the chain to skip again

Thought that might be the case.

The car is stock and its done 25k.hmmm

Ok, now i'm a bit confused.

How do you check if you've jumped teeth on the timing chain?

I always turned the crank clockwise. When it was coming out of compression and getting easier it would 'bounce'. I.e. move forward and a bit back. This wouldn't have caused any issues would it?

As I was turning the crank around I saw it had
jumped 3 teeth , as below:


Then randomly I saw it was at 1 or 2 in front of the cam markers and finally (after 5 mins of rotating the crankshaft) i got:




Spot on!!


I'm guessing that this is NOT the way to tell if it has jumped a tooth (i.e. the top end is out of sync with the bottom end). How do you check?

Also, I ended up making no adjustments as I wasn't feeling too confident by this stage. One or two intake valves were around 0.007" Even at 0.008" they were very tight. Exhaust cams were on 0.009" mostly. Is this too tight, should I get it adjusted? Honda told me it should be 0.007" to 0.009" on intake, and I think 0.009" to 0.010" on exhaust.

In case anyone is wondering how to check your chain timing, there is a reply here that explains it:

http://type-r-owners.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?75606-EP3-non-start-wont-start


I ended up changing all intake to 0.008" and exhaust to 0.010". Car sounds a bit more tappy (most valves were tighter than spec) but runs a bit smoother as they are all equal.