And to my surprise.

And to my surprise! Lash lock nut MIA.

It's a safe bet after looking all around and under cam box area of course. I'll be going on bottom side of engine after ordering gasket, to hope it's in the pan.....I'm going to be doing some wrenching.[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Gootzibird13 wrote:

And to my surprise! Lash lock nut MIA.

It's a safe bet after looking all around and under cam box area of course. I'll be going on bottom side of engine after ordering gasket, to hope it's in the pan.....I'm going to be doing some wrenching.[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Does the difference in color of the spring collar mean that my valve could be damaged? Thankfully it was an intake valve vs exhaust. I know that's better in regards to burnout. I ran it home from work with the clicking going on no more than 4,000rpm mostly. 45 miles or so.

IMO "clicking" means loose
LOOSE = noisy but no harm usually done
TIGHT = equals possible valve burning
I`d say it`s fine

( now just to find the wayward nut )

Fish around in there with a magnet on a stick...

Copy that. Maybe I'll get lucky and it will be already sitting on the magnet of my drain plug. Any wagers out there? I will post my progress for shits and grins....

Or maybe that's being a bit overzealous. The nut is small enough and light enough to had a good swim through very rough seas. There's a bit of luck already spent by avoiding something catastrophic IMO. As it is actually steel it could have easily shortened my trip home from work quite suddenly to say the least.

It will be in the sump. Around the outside of the cylinder castings there are big galleries for the oil to return to the sump, it will of fallen down there.

Very early in the piece I had the same thing happen with one of mine because years of working on Smallblocks which also used 6mm adjusters had made me very leery about overtightening the nuts. Doing that on the early Smallblocks would result in a snapped adjuster, not when you tightened the nut, but the next time it was loosened! It was very tedious. You'd het bikes in that Harry Hometune had done the valves on and when you tried to adjust the valves you'd bust an adjuster so it would be 'Your Fault' and you'd be expected to replace it for nothing. Anyway that led me to use an abundance of caution with my new 8V and I didn't tighten one of the nuts sufficiently and it exited stage left into the sump.

Retrieving it was made harder by one of the front sump bolts being seized. I could tell by its feel if I tried to remove it it was going to snap but in one of those very rare lucky occurrences when I tapped the sump the couple of threads I'd managed to loosen it allowed the sump to drop just a couple of centimetres at the back and peering through the crack I could see the errant nut sitting atop the oil pick up strainer! Reaching in carefully with a pair of long needle nose pliers I was able to pluck the nut out, retighten the sump and then reinstall the nut at the top end! It's not often you get that sort of luck!

Just to reinforce a message though the 6mm adjusters are quite fragile on the 8V, especially the early ones with a flat bladed screwdriver slot and the 0.5mm thread pitch. Care does have to be taken with these as they will snap easily if provoked and even if they don't snap they can deform significantly. The change to the later type adjusters with the 0.25mm thread pitch and 3mm Allen key hex in the top was I'm sure mainly undertaken to help prevent this sort of damage. The trick with locknut torque is 'Not too little and not too much'!

Interesting. I've never noticed color variances till I took the pictures. I've adjusted lash on both sides maybe 6 times tops. I'm at 62,000 miles currently. If I remember correctly upon pondering, that particular valve has given me concerns in the past by slight stripping due to overtightening. Which as we all know, can easily be hamfisted. My pseudo cure was ordering new nut with a drib of blue lock tight and only adjusting absolutely when necessary. Well my last adjustment, just this oil change, guess what I forgot?.......

Thanks Pete. You are right they sure are sensitive, especially the first time or two you do them. I remember worrying for quite a few miles after those initial adjustments. I'll let everyone know how my search goes as I mentioned.

Found it In the sump. Easy peasy.[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Reminds me of a Lario I used to own, I thought I had a rattly tappet and took the cover off, one of the tappets c/w locknut fell on the ground, no damage done.
Riding my 72 Eldorado one day when it suddenly made a dreaded doga doga sound and lost all oil pressure. I assumed it had run a big end so after banishing it in the corner of the shed for a couple of months I pulled the engine. On stripping it down I found that the 6mm bolt that retains the rocker shaft had backed out, the shaft had dropped down and was banging on the inside of the cover.