Tappets

[guest806]

I know there are various topics on this over the forums but just how important is it to get the Tappets done every 25k miles and what sort of tollorance do you have in miles?  The reason I ask is I'm still waiting to pick up my 55 reg Jazz and it has just over 21K on the clock.  It's from an independant retailer not a Honda garage and I doubt that although are going to give it a service and make sure it has a full MOT, they will not have looked at the Tappets. It does come with a full service history.

At £380 quoted elswhere on this forum, thats a huge unexpexcted bill.  Could i wait untill it's next service in which time the milage should be around the 28K mark?

[bill888]

My guess is no more than 500 miles over 25k miles if you wish to maintain the perfect full service history, in case you need to make any future claim against Honda in the next year or two even after the warranty has expired for any catastrophic engine fault.

But is your car a 2006 model on 55 plate?   You may discover you don’t need to check the tappets until I think it is 62.5k miles.

[culzean]

My 1.4 SE has done 50K without tappets being looked at and it runs very well indeed, I do my own servicing and I intend to keep the car for a while, so keeping a full (and costly) service history does not interest me because it makes very little difference to the trade in value of say an 8 year old car.  My last car was a 1.5VTEC civic and it did 180K without any work on the engine, it always started first time and used no oil between changes - also according to the MOT readouts the exhaust emissions were the same as when it had its first MOT. I only changed cars because the bodywork around the rear wheel arches was showing rust and bodywork is expensive to repair.

Good quality oil and frequent changes are your best insurance policy on a car engine

[guest598]

Yes i agree with culzean 100%

[golfer]

as anew member with a 53 reg cvt jazz  which has done just over 24k miles,the tappet saga is of interest, i have the Haynes manual and looked up what would be needed to diy in relation to seals gaskets and the like, later as i was passing a large Honda main dealer,i tried to purchase the egr plate gasket also theintake manifold packing and throttle body gasket, only to be told they would have to be ordered specially as no dealer would normally stock them, so what do they do if you want your tappets checked on a service?

[guest806]

Golfer are you going to give it a try then?
I'd be intrested to know how you get on.

[golfer]

to jazz-e yes ,as soon as i can obtain the seals and gaskets i will check my own tappets, i don,t think it will present any problems other than obtaining the spares, so could be weeks before job is completed, i have worked on all my own cars, as well aircraft engines for over fifty years and have not had to many problems, like most things preparation is the key.

[culzean]

Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like but the fact that Honda dealers do not stock the gasket sets needed to carry out tappet adjustment seems like a bad sign.  Honda cars are so reliable that dealers must be scratching around to keep their workshops busy, (the good old stand-by job of changing the cam-belt regularly is not required on a Jazz).

What could be better than to invent a job on the car that does not really need doing, but is a bit too hard for most amateur mechanics to tackle, and is very hard (if not impossible) for your customers to check if the work has actually been carried out.  I have never owned a car that needed routine adjustment of tappets at regular intervals and am very doubtfull that a engine as well built as a Honda unit would require such attention. 

But if you want to keep an unbroken collection of those all important and expensive stamps in your service book ------- you are putty in their hands.

[guest806]

Was there a sinificant change to the 06 engine? as they only need them every 62,500 miles.

[guest229]

   As I understand it Honda, and I am sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, changed their minds on this issue on the basis of optimising exhaust emissions against servicing costs and went for the higher figure.

[JazzyB]

I would of thought it was based on the fact the later engines had better tolerances. I.e. they didn't go out of tune and needed reseting.

[culzean]

The only reason I would spend £350 on having my tappets adjusted is if there was a chance that the gap between the rocker arms and the top of the valves was 'closing up' - this would mean that eventually the valves would not be allowed to close properly and would burn out.  If the gap is prone to open up and this somehow affects the emissions then I will wait for the car to fail its annual MOT emissions test and then look for a reason. We have two 1.4SE 53 plate jazz cars in the family, both have done over 50K without having tappets looked at, and both are running just fine ( It would have cost us £1400 to have the tappets checked at 24K and 50K).

[ajay]

 Darlingtons of Harlow, Essex quoted me £100 to change spark plugs and an extra £30 to adjust the tappets at the same time, but I had a 25000 mile service at £325 which included both jobs.

[guest869]

Checking the valve clearances is a simple job requiring feeler gauges. I would be quite happy doing this. Altering the clearance will be a much more involved job requiring a new shim and a method of removal of the old shim (assuming it is shim which most new engine are)

I would be surprised if the valve clearances go out of spec on a modern engine, especially Honda.

What I intend to do on mine (when I get it) is check the clearances and then make a decision as to what to do. If the car has done 55K miles and never had them altered and are still as per spec then that will give me confidence they will be Ok for a long time.

[guest806]

John, please update this thread once you have checked them out.