DHC valve clearance adjustment

I did check the DHC's valve clearances yesterday;

Measuring the clearances showed that valves number 2, 6 and 8 were between 0,05 to 0,10 mm to tight. The others were still well within their tolerance range! By the way a large 38 mm ring spanner is ideal to turn the engine over. Much better than putting a spanner on the hexagonal part at the back off the camshaft.

So the valves had to be adjusted, which means the camshaft has to be removed. As per the "book" fix the cam-sprocket to the bracket to prevent the chain tensioner from falling out. Oh and don't forget to take it off after you have finished!

As I had borrowed the complete stock of shims from a friend who runs a (by now ex-Leyland and ex-Rover dealership) that shouldn't be a problem. But alas, I forgot that I have a reground camshaft in this engine (Kent T14/TT10204) so I needed some rather thick shims. And of course they were not there! Well after an hour’s measuring them all, it turned out that there was one shim that I could use;

As a result I could reshuffle the others a bit, so in the end I only needed one 3.40 mm thick shim, which, of course, I hadn't. Only two that were rather thicker than that. A few phone calls to several firms in the region were not very hopeful, no one could supply one in that thickness. But one of them gave me the address off a firm in a village some 15 km to the north who could regrind one off the shims. So two hours later (thanks to rush hour traffic) I had my last shim to put back in. From there on it was quite straight forward again, putting everything together, torque down the camshaft and connecting everything up.

Then Rob come along to have a look at what I was doing in his workshop so there's even a picture off me at work!

And as he has a rather nice workshop;