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Riley :)I want to adjust valves solid any easy way to turn motor over by hand.

Grab the fan blade & fan belt at the same time & pull. It's much easier if you pull the spark plugs.

Pull the spark plugs, put the truck in high gear, and slowly roll it forward. You can inch the engine over very accurately that way.
Jerry

what i like to do is to remove the flywheel cover and turn the flywheel by hand to get the markings and the ball on the bottom. i clean the wheel up real good and take my dremil and polish the ball and remove all the crud in the U/C markings and paint them white with a toothpick. i then continue to clean off the flywheel all the way around cleaning up the triangle. clean up the pointer on the bell housing and then im ready to go and everything is clearly visible for the next process. i then pull the dist. cap off and bump the starter until the rotor is aproaching #1 plug then i grab the fan and dial it in on the U/C mark and the pointer.

riley

Thanks for the tips never thought of the high gear trick.

riley,

You can save yourself a lot of rockin&rollin by adjusting the valves hot while the motor is running. This is how real men do it and have done it since the dawn of time.

Stuart

I've tried it hot while running, and it didn't work for me.

What works great is hot not running and turn the engine over by hand with the fan, don't waste the time pulling the plugs, you only need to make two revolutions, it's not that hard.

It's been a couple years now, but last time I adjusted the valves on my 1 ton was at a rest area in Washington state in the middle of a road trip, only takes 10 or 15 minutes.

-Get your 5/8" wrench, straight screwdriver, and two feeler gauges ready.
-Go for a ride and get the engine up to temperature.
-Stop and pull the valve cover.
-Turn the engine until you see the exhaust valve close and the intake immediately open for any one cylinder.
-If that happened to be on the #1 cylinder, then adjust the valves on the #6 cylinder. Or # 2 goes with #5, and #3 with #4.
-Continue to turn the engine till the valves just close and open on the next cylinder, and adjust the opposite/corresponding valves. This can all be done within 2 revolutions on a 4 cycle engine.

This works because when a cylinder is alternating from exhaust stroke to intake stroke, as easily seen by the valves, then the opposite cylinder is close to TDC on the compression stroke, it's lifters are on the base circle of the cam lobes, and the valves can be adjusted.

For most any engine with an even number of cylinders this works. To determine what cylinder pairs with which take the firing order, for our 6 cylinder it is 1-5-3-6-2-4. Write the numbers down in order in two columns, first the left one with the first half the numbers, then the right one.

1-6
5-2
3-4

This shows you which pair of cylinders you can adjust the valves by watching them move on one cylinder and adjusting the other set.

Grigg

P.S. When you put your valve cover gasket on use gasket adhesive, contact cement, or weatherstrip adhesive to stick it only to the valve cover, put nothing on the other side (although some folks like wheel bearing grease). Then when you adjust the valves it's easy to get the cover off and is reusable as is.

Back in the day most mechanics that worked on stovebolts had a tool with that had a screwdriver built into the wrench. You could put the box end over the lock nut, crack it loose and then use your fingers to turn the knob for the screwdriver and then use your other had to run the feeler gauge. They always adjusted the valves with the motor hot and running. It also helps to really slow the idle down when you are adjusting the valves. After doing a few it gets easier. Just take your time.