I'm convinced either the asshat who built my motor was bound and determined to cut as many corners as possible or honda torque specs are BS regarding anything having to do with rubber seals. Last time I did a valve adjustment, I broke probably about half the little valve cover nuts/studs just torqueing them to FSM specs... so I had to go buy all new studs and nuts. Just now I was putting the oil pan on (after fishing for car parts in the windage tray, not fun, in case you were wondering), I set my brand new torque wrench to 10 lbs, and started tightening the bolts. Well, two of them broke before the wrench ever clicked, leading me to believe that 10 lbs is horseshit, and you should just get your smallest wrench and hand tighten them. So now I'm eternally damned to have a leaky oil pan gasket (both broken bolts are right next to eachother).


On the plus side, my new head is finally on and the bottom of the motor is put back together. All I gotta do is put in the cams, do a valve adjustment and put both manifolds back on and I should have a fully functioning motor.

 

that sucks.

 

I basically say that if something is gonna be under torque or pressure then it should be torqued down properly. if its just a bolt to hold the oil pan on or the distributor.. hand tight is perfectly fine.

 

You should fix those broken bolts. It will leak a lot when the engine is running.

 

they're broken off in the motor, and I'm not going to try and drill them out. I had to check the oil pretty regularly before this job, so doing so afterward should be second nature

 

Ya, it might be worth the effort to fix though. It would really suck to build up a motor and have it leak oil right away.

 

I'm not dealing with it. If anything, i might ask a machinist to do it, but I hate doing shit like that. It is really lame, seeing as I've been working on this project for like 7 months now, but at the same time, it just wouldn't seem right if the shitbox weren't blowing smoke or dripping oil on the driveway. h:

 

geta anew engine, yay!

 

Make sure you are not torqueing to ft-lb when you should be using inch-lb. Was your torque wrench calibrated? A lot of people leave them at the last setting and it ends up ruining the wrench, it needs to be zeroed out after each use.

 

i was about to suggest the same,..the FSM tells you to torque them down to IN-LBS and not ft-lbs ,...alot of my customers have made the same mistake,...and like oldman suggested, always set your torque wrench back to zero after you use it