OK, thanks Lou. Hmm. I wonder if the Alfa tool is designed to depress both the inlet and exhaust buckets at the same time? In which case, the shoulders bear on the bucket edge and the centre ridge locates in the gap between the two. If that is the case, I will have to use the Fiat tool to depress one bucket at a time, but that is no worse than using the Haynes tool.
My main concern regarding borrowing a tool is that there may be accessibility issues with my engine bay that wouldn't normally be encountered in an Alfasud, which would necessitate modifying the tool. I found this out when I tried to adjust my twin lobe tappets on the old engine - I made up a special Allen key, and then had to re-make it to fit the rear cylinders. But I digress.
I have now removed the cam covers and taken the plugs out, they all appear to be in good condition, although there is some variability in the colour at the tip. I have measured all 8 valve clearances twice, just to be sure, and sadly, I was right - #1 inlet is too tight (0.30mm), #1 exhaust is too loose (0.55mm), and #4 inlet is too loose (0.45mm). I wasn't expecting that on a freshly rebuilt engine
Maybe being 0.05mm out-of-spec isn't so bad, but the rattle is quite obvious once the engine is up to temperature, and I don't like the idea of #1 inlet being too tight.
Still, on the plus side, the engine is oil-tight, has good compression and oil pressure, so once the valve clearances are sorted it should be good. It certainly outperforms my old engine by a very significant margin!
Lauren
