Thread: Lost shims!

did u take the dizzy off before loosening cams?

pics or it didnt happen.. hehe

wow. I have never herd that happen before. But yeah its funny how i just talked to miko like a couple of weeks before this happen and he told me the samething. I was going to post up the info on my thread but i didnt wana get flamed for the simple reason that its always been done a certain way but as i found out who cares where the shims go lol

yea i took the dizzy off.....its just when i put it bacc in i mite have not done it right but it fit snug in there....after cranking the engine for a while i decided to take it off again n found that the distributor broke.

You probaby didnt have the notches lined up right and broke the end of the distributor off. Not good man. It will only slide back in all the way one way. If it doesnt pop all the way in with zero effort then it is 180 deg out. Never force it on or use the bolts to pull it in. It should pop right in no problem if done right.

Time for a new distributor and depending on how bad the cam is messed up, you might need a new cam. If your running stock cams you can use the highport or lowport cams, it doesnt matter.

well....the previous owner wrote down that it has g20 cams n it was tuned w/ that so i was wondering if i would need a retune if i change the cams or just to stick w/ the same ones.....also idk the year of the g20 it came off of so how would i find that out?? n wat kinda distributor would i need?

@Nismo_34 - This is not your thread anymore lol.

@97 200SRX - We need pics though. I gotta see this.

forget the cams. Whatever cam you had in there sucked. So get a 91-92 cams. Which one is it? Intake cam right? Yeah get the intake cam from that year motor and you can make a little bit more power

it was the exhaust cam....n wat cams r u talkin bout that i should get? 91-92 outta wat car? also is there a way of lookin at the cams n tellin wat kind it is? would there be a part number or something stamped on it??

Just to throw a bit of light on the shim issue, the shim thickness selection even on a Hydraulic lifter head is still important as having a difference in clearance in total height will cause the rocker to sit on an angle and the cam lobe contact area is reduced.

The reason i bring this up is a head on a semi-race motor i had to fix up a while ago. The head had been removed and an engine shop machined the valve seats and heads but had not ground the ends of the stems to correct for the amount of material removed at the other end.

Now it was only 2 valves but they were a bit higher than the others and they caused the rockers to sit on an angle, which resulted in severe damage to the hardening and excessive wear on the new camshafts. I had to replace the cams again and carefully measure the height of the valves without removing the head.

As it was the valves that were too high were the ones fitted with the flat shim so i just got my engine shop to machine them down to what i needed. Motor is now fine but that was over $1000 to fix due to someone assuming it would be ok

In this situation it was easy to find a cause and im not saying it would be this far out on a stock head, but it's something to consider.

No kidding! But there is a lot of useful info being shared that was not easily found without looking through a bunch of garbage.