Tuning punto gt mk1 piper camshaft/shims question

[dman86]

hello new to the forum and new to punto's. I recently bought a punto gt that had a problem with the shims. So Now I have got a piper camshaft complete with shims that i bought to swap over an solve the problem.
im going to buy new belt aswell to fit at same time.

Would anyone know roughly what im looking at paying in labour to get these parts fitted?

cheers in advance

 

[blu73]

well not ever fitted a cam myself but pretty sure you can't just buy shims and expect them to fit. You have to measure the gaps and get shims to fit...

copied from random website:
"Shims are "select fit" based on the amount of valve clearance desired vs. the amount of clearance that already exists. If, for example, you want .004 clearance, but you actually have .006 clearance, you'd select a shim that is .002 thicker than what is in place already. Not all the shims in an engine are the same thickness, so you must measure each one individually if the thickness is not printed on the shim. Therefore, an engine may have a dozen different thicknesses of shims already in place in order to provide the same, correct, clearance between camshaft and bucket. This means that if you have an engine needing valve clearance correction, you might get lucky in that the shim you remove from one valve may be exactly what is needed on another."

Best way to get a idea of price though would be to ring up a few places, tell them what you need and ask for a price.

 

[fingers99]

As Blu says.

Shims are used to take up wear and manufacturing tolerances, which, as a rule, occur mainly on the valve and valve seat.

Now, since the very first thing anyone competent will do is to recut the valves, it's unlikely that more than a couple of shims will be the right fit.

First thing to do is get hold of the correct clearances from Piper (they're very unlikely to be the same as the standard clearances). Then try and find a FIAT or Alfa or Volvo independent in your area.

If I had the faintest idea where you lived................

I'm inclined to believe that the original diagnosis was wrong............

 

[dman86]

yh I was just going to get the original shims adjusted or changed at garage but i found this piper camshaft on ebay and it has the shims and buckets inside and so i thought it would be just as if not easier to just have this done and possibly would cost bout same in labour?

so do you guys think these shims that come with this cam will need adjusting aswel? they sound like a right ball ache

and i live in preston lancs
cheers

 

[fingers99]

It's easy enough to do on the 8v engines. You need a valve spring compressor and a set of metric feeler guages and a micrometer.

Dunno anyone around there, but you may find that whoever can skim (adviseable) the head and recut the valves will do it.

If you present them with all the shims, they'll be able to use most of them.

BIG Mick at eurocarcare in Derby is said to be the cheapest source of new ones -- less than £3 a hit IIRC -- Google will find.