Hello all,
First post here on the forum concerning my Mazda 2 from year 2012. I really enjoy the car and haven't had any problems with it except for this one thing: Cylinder 1 currently has the smallest valve clearance buckets of 2.85mm installed. The other cylinders are on a close second.
After googling around a bit I found more stories of cars that had the smallest buckets installed. But then I found there are a few 'underground' methods to increase the life span of the cylinder head before going for a complete revision. For example: for another brand of car I found there are guys who shorten the valve tip a tiny bit and are still happily driving around (yes, this could ruin the hardened tip). Another more elegant solution I read about was using after market buckets with even smaller dimensions.
Of course I'm fully aware factory limits are exceeded and this is not recommended at all, but compared to a VERY expensive cylinder head revision this is interesting! And in my case it's even free. I can let my friend make the 2.85mm bucket into a 2.80mm. He can do this very precisely. And I am capable of removing the camshaft and replacing the buckets myself.
Now this does mean the valve would be seated 0.05mm deeper into the cilinder head. How bad (or not bad) would this be? I looked at a lot of pictures of naked cylinder heads with valve seats (naughty me..) and my educated guess is there must be at least 1mm of usable extra depth into the metal? (thought)
On a side note, for those who wonder why on earth this car is already on its smallest valve clearance buckets: It's a Mazda that runs on LPG-gas and Mazda didn't install hardened valve seats... (mad) And since I'm out of warranty there's nothing they will do. I was hoping to get to the 100.000km. This way I would have saved enough money because of the cheaper LPG to justify a complete cylinder head replacement and still have spare money. But currently it looks like I will finish at the 60.000km mark. Every 0.05mm extra will give me around 10.000km. So to get to the 100.000 mark I'd probably need a final bucket of 2.65mm
First post here on the forum concerning my Mazda 2 from year 2012. I really enjoy the car and haven't had any problems with it except for this one thing: Cylinder 1 currently has the smallest valve clearance buckets of 2.85mm installed. The other cylinders are on a close second.
After googling around a bit I found more stories of cars that had the smallest buckets installed. But then I found there are a few 'underground' methods to increase the life span of the cylinder head before going for a complete revision. For example: for another brand of car I found there are guys who shorten the valve tip a tiny bit and are still happily driving around (yes, this could ruin the hardened tip). Another more elegant solution I read about was using after market buckets with even smaller dimensions.
Of course I'm fully aware factory limits are exceeded and this is not recommended at all, but compared to a VERY expensive cylinder head revision this is interesting! And in my case it's even free. I can let my friend make the 2.85mm bucket into a 2.80mm. He can do this very precisely. And I am capable of removing the camshaft and replacing the buckets myself.
Now this does mean the valve would be seated 0.05mm deeper into the cilinder head. How bad (or not bad) would this be? I looked at a lot of pictures of naked cylinder heads with valve seats (naughty me..) and my educated guess is there must be at least 1mm of usable extra depth into the metal? (thought)
On a side note, for those who wonder why on earth this car is already on its smallest valve clearance buckets: It's a Mazda that runs on LPG-gas and Mazda didn't install hardened valve seats... (mad) And since I'm out of warranty there's nothing they will do. I was hoping to get to the 100.000km. This way I would have saved enough money because of the cheaper LPG to justify a complete cylinder head replacement and still have spare money. But currently it looks like I will finish at the 60.000km mark. Every 0.05mm extra will give me around 10.000km. So to get to the 100.000 mark I'd probably need a final bucket of 2.65mm