[Engine] Valves DW8

[Arbe]

Hi Due to a problem in relation to starting on a DW8 engine 1.9 i was advised by a French Auto outlet that this engine is renown for a problem related to valves. My engine started to misbehave over a period of 4 months until it reached the stage of not starting. We removed the Cam cover and tested the gap in the valves to find that four of the valves had no gap at all. We that is my son and I are wondering how the gaps could have closed in this way. It is at this point worth mentioning that the engine turn over very easily, which it did not do before in fact one had to be careful not to run the battery down, as my son had the habit of not waiting for the heater plugs to finish their cycle.

Can anyone explain how these gaps could have closed as I have the awful thought that the valves must have dug into the valve seats.

[frank]

i,ve seen valves hammered into a tulip shape before (with closed gaps) depends how hard the valves and seats are i guess

[cancunia]

The valve seats wear over time & the gaps will close between the top of the valve stem & the camshaft. It's a normal thing that will happen on a lot of engines. The 1.9d is well known for this non start & valve clearance problem apparently.

[Arbe]

Does this mean that one has to buy a new head and valves. my engine has only done 132000 miles. as I understand the seats cannot be machined.

[cancunia]

I think you can replace the shims to adjust the gaps, have a search on here for 1.9 valves or similar. Also download the Haynes manual, on here.

[polar]

Just reshim with the clearances at the loose end of the tolerance but still within spec - job done.

As for the valves - years ago oil was poor and so was the material used so valvetrains wore leading to excessive valve clearances. Now oil is good and the materials used are superior so the valves slowly wear into the valve seats closing up the clearances. = burnt out valves!

Just remember to adjust again them in another 100k miles

[Arbe]

Lets hope I can obtain these parts by post in France or i will have to look to Britain for the parts. Thank you for the information has been given gives me some hopes of getting vehicle back up and running and with transport where I live is very hard, no buses , no trains only expensive taxis.

[cancunia]

The 1.9 is a common enough engine, and it's in a lot of French cars so while it may take a bit of searching there must be a supply in France. There are posts on here about grinding the existing shims down, but take care as the shims will be case hardened so there are limits to the amount of grinding before you hit the softer metal.

[jj9]

You will find a list of all the different sizes of shim and their part numbers at the link below.

https://www.catcar.info/citroen/?lang=en...aWVyPT0%3D

Any Citroen or Peugeot dealer can order them for you, if you can't find them on ebay.

You can often swap the present shims to a different location to give the required clearance so you may not need a full set of 8.


This may be helpful to you... https://www.valvulita.com/sites/default/...tments.pdf






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[geoff]

No need for any head machining and as ssaid before it is normal for these engines.

I've done the job a couple of times on the same engine ( over many thousands of miles and several years interval ) and it isn't a difficult job to do yourself just time consuming. Use the Haynes Workshop Manual available on this site for free download it has all the information you need.

Shims are cheap to buy from the main dealer perhaps even 5 euro each

Look on this Forum ( search ) for much information on how to do it.