CHASING CiTROëNS

Come on. Do it. You know you want to, and you’ll feel great after.

Everything starts with a nice cold engine. It won’t work right if you do it any other way. Remove the Air Cleaner and associated bits – cover the top of the carb. You don’t want to drop anything in there, do you?

Remove the aluminum rocker cover. Think about polishing it. I did mine, but I’ll have to do a post about it. Not that easy. Still, a little Mother’s Aluminum & Mag polish and some #0000 steel wool does a decent job.

Adjust the valve clearances at the rocker to .008″ for the intake, and .010″ for the exhaust. Use a stout screwdriver with your box wrench with a comfortable handle and the right size blade. a blade too small or a handle that you can’t get a grip on will waste your valuable time.

Adjust the valves with one cylinder with the piston at TDC, end of the compression stroke (see below for the sequence). The valves of the corresponding cylinders are then “in balance”, i.e. the inlet is at the start of opening, and the exhaust has finished. You can pretty much see this when the exhaust-side valve spring “just” returns from being compressed. Turn the engine with the starting handle (easy if you have a buddy) and adjust the clearance by the book:

1. 1st cylinder with the valves of the 4th cylinder in balance.
2. 3rd cylinder with the valves of the 2nd cylinder in balance.
3. 4th cylinder with the valves of the 1stcylinder in balance.
4. 2nd cylinder with the valves of the 3rd cylinder in balance.

That’s the book way. I just take the plugs out and use the button on the underside of the solenoid on the battery. I watch for the valves to come to rest. If you’re wrong, when you loosen the adjuster, the valve spring will start to move with the rocker. That’s bad. You got it wrong. Bump again, my friend. Bonus points for bumping it for a few cycles and then re-checking. Always test to see if you missed something.

Once it’s all there, just put the gasket back on for the Aluminum rocker cover and tighten the cover using fiber gaskets.