Valve Adjustment Frequency/Cost

[miken426]

I have a 73.5 2.4/CIS with about 10,000 miles on a recent rebuild a few years ago and the engine runs excellent. How frequent should I perform a valve adjustment? Is it normal for a pro shop in my area to take about 5.5 hours to do the adjustment? Appreciated.

[RSTarga]

Every 10K. Sounds like a lot of time, is that all that is included? Usually it includes plugs,timing, oil change, mixture check. AKA "tuneup"

[NeunElf]

Are they billing you for 5½ labor hours? That's pretty extreme for the old cars--I think I can do it in 30 minutes (and valve cover gaskets for less than $ 40) and I'm no master mechanic. It might be that difficult a job on late cars with catalytic converters requiring exhaust system disassembly.

The engine should be at room temperature when you adjust the valves so if you drive to the shop it might be five hours before they can start.

[miken426]

5.5 hours @$135/hr for the valve adjustment + cost of gaskets (not the remaining tune up parts or installation - plugs, gas & oil filters, oil, etc - all of which I do on my own)

5.5 hours sounded long to me. At $135/hr and 5.5 hours, sounds like something I need to learn to perform on my own. On a scale from 1-10, 10 being hardest, how difficult would it be for me to do. I'm mechanically inclined and do various work on my cars, but have never adjusted the lifters. Thanks for the input

[NeunElf]

Adjusting the valves on a 911 is kind of a pain because you turn the crank 120° adjust an intake valve then crawl under the car to set an exhaust vale and then repeat five more times, but it doesn't take a high skill level.

On the really old cars you have to be careful neither to undertighten nor to overtighten the nuts on the valve covers with cork gaskets but on a ’73½ that shouldn't be a factor.

You should definitely pay the whopping $ 7.50 for a 911-specific Feeler Gauge (.004")--I can't imagine doing 911 valves without one. Standard feeler gauges work well on 356s though.

[Harvey Weidman]

For that kind of money you could buy an old VW and practice a few times and then sell it after you learn the technique...... probably for a profit to boot.

As I recall, (the current mechanics will chime in) we paid our mechanics flat rate 4-5 hours for a tune up including adjusting valves, changing plugs, points, condenser, oil (engine and trans) and oil filter and air filter.
(They could do two before lunch when the cars were new...now I don't know)

JMHO
H

[chris_seven]

Do they drop the engine?

$135 an hour - we should move our shop to the US we charge about 1/3 of that rate and would charge an hour.

[boxster03]

find a good buddy in the hood that knows how to do it and buy the beer and pizza

[VintageExcellen]

If it's just a valve adjust only then 5 and half hours seems like a bunch. 30 min is too short but not saying can't be done - although the shop charges a time and if the mechanic can beat that time then the mechanic gets the bump for being efficient. There are other things to consider like if they are cleaning your parts off or resurfacing covers - I like to clean the parts I work on for a nice reassembly but if your engine had that done 10k ago then not much would need to be done. Are they adjusting or trouble shooting anything else at all? Are they installing new rocker parts, probably not but that would add significant time. I would agree with Harvey and the same could be done today - 2 full tune ups before lunch sounds about right. At $135/hr, which is the going rate in a big city, the shop should have trained guys who can work fairly fast. They should not have excuses for how hard the job was or that the mechanic could not get it done as fast when they charge that rate. Oil changes should be done at the same time as a valve adjust because most of the oil will come out anyway when the lower valve cover come off, so the oil change adds to the price and time a little. I would say today you should do your valve adjustment every 6000 miles because who drives a early 911 more than 6000 miles per year, so every second oil change is a very safe number. If you guys think $135/hr is ludicrous then rent your own shop in a city, pay the high overhead, buy all the equipment, try and find a skilled employee who knows old cars, and pay the govt to operate and see how much you can save. Of course you can do it yourself, if you don't work on cars often then it is a bitch of a job, not impossible but frustrating to the non mechanic. If you can work on a car yourself and only go 3000 miles per year then it might be worth the hassle. At 5.5 hour you should ask more questions or maybe find a different shop.

[ZombieBranz]

I'm new to Porsche and just completed my first valve adjustment. Not really hard...just a bit tedious. Jack the back up and put on stands and remove the rear tires.makes access much easier.

I used a tool made by Kirk engineering that is a more fool proof way of setting each valve gap correctly. Took me about 3 hours first time but I'm sure I can do the future adjustments a lot faster....maybe 1.5-2 hrs. The tool made things easier for me than having to fiddle with feeler guage.