my car is a 92 GS with a b16a swapped into it, and recently me and a buddy did a valve adjustment for it. the thing is when we did it the way the teg tip says to line up the cams and set it to TDC then adjust the valves, when we did it this way and started it up it sounded like a diesel. so we talked to some pros and did it by just making sure the lobes are straight up and down and adjusting just 2 at a time, instead of the TDC method of adjusting 4 at a time. anyways what would cause TDC to not work anywhere near properly on my car? my cams look stock to me, they have the UP arrows, and they say PR3 on them, they have the notchs too. i’m worried about something being completely off thats all. valve train sounds perfect now though, just wondering why TDC wouldn’t work properly. btw we set the valves to
you have to do tdc for each set of 4 valves. if your looking at the valves when you turn the engine, tdc for each cylinder is when the intake lobes point straight toward the firewall and the exhaust points straight toward the radiator(lobes point away from eachother). adjust those 4 valves then rotate engine until the next set of lobes point away from eachother and adjust those.
yeah thats how we did it when we did it right. i just can’t wrap my head around why the helms manual and other manuals would say use TDC by setting the cam gears at a certain spot and then adjusting cuz when we did mine that way they were WAY off in fact my car sounded like a diesel.
You must not be reading the manual correctly. When the cam gears have the up marks pointing up and the white line on the crank pulley is at the lower cover pointer, then the #1 cylinder (closest to the timing belt) is at TDC, and that is when you adjust the valves for that cylinder only. Then the manual tells you how to rotate the crank counter clockwise until the cam gear rotates a quarter turn. The ‘UP’ marks on the cam gears will point to the left. This brings the next set of valves on cylinder #3 to TDC for adjustment. Then rotate crank again to bring cylinder #4 valves to TDC, the ‘UP’ marks on the cam gears will point straight down, and finally rotate crank for cylinder #2’s valves and the ‘UP’ marks on the cam gears will point to the right.
The valves are adjusted 4 at a time for each cylinder beginning with cylinder #1, then #3, #4, and finally #2. If you think about it, this is the same firing order from the dist. to the spark plugs. When you go around the distributor, the wires are connected beginning at the bottom left of the dist. to cylinder #1,#3,#4,#2 rotating clockwise.
Also, make sure you are using the right size feeler gauge, because they are usually marked in mm and inches, and recheck the clearance after tightening the lock nut.
If you follow the Helm’s exactly, you have done the job right. If your car diesels, then you have done something wrong, either bad clearances or you turned the crank pulley the wrong way causing the cam gears to skip teeth on the timing belt. At the end of the valve adjustment, bring the cam gears back to TDC and recheck to see if your crank pulley white mark lines up with the lower cover pointer. If it doesn’t, your timing gears have skipped teeth.
okay well my car’s valves are adjusted properly now, cuz we ended up doing it just by looking at the lobes. but we did turn the crank in both directions to help us get it exact, mostly just minor adjustments of turning the other way, but this was awhile ago so i could be wrong. but if we turned it the crank the wrong way would it skip teeth for sure and should i be looking into this and making sure its okay or could it not have skipped? cuz my car still runs perfectly fine now… but you saying turning the crank the opposite way can make it skip teeth really has me worried.
If its running fine then you probably didn’t skip any teeth. You can always pull the valve cover and check if you are worried about it. Yes, turning the crank pulley bolt clockwise can release tension on the belt, sometimes enough to cause a cam gear to skip a tooth, sometimes not. The only reason I know is because it happened to me.
yeah we tried to follow the helms manual for doing the valve adjustment but we thought that picture they have of the cylinders labeled 4, 3, 2, 1 was there for some other reason. so we read along with setting the cam gears but we went by the piston firing order 1, 3, 4, 2 so essentially i think we pretty much adjusted them backwards lol. so when i started it up it sounded like we just swapped a v8 diesel into my integra… so i was like yeah thats not right… at all…
so we talked to a couple pros and they all suggested that you’ll always get more accurate results by doing it by the look of the lobes and adjusting 2 at a time. so we went accross and set each set of lobes for the exhaust set by set and then did the intake set by set and now my engine purrs nicely.
we did turn the crank in both directions a lot throughout the process, i had no idea that turning it the wrong way could have such a possible effect on the teeth. i knew that the helms manual said turn a certain way but i think they should put a big bold warning in now lol for first-timers like myself of course
for first-timers like myself of course 
