Valve Spring Retainer Wear

could be valves stretching... as they stretch you adjust to make up the difference by loosening the adjuster... as the height comes up the retainer will get closer to the rocker arm itself... it could just be normal to this point, but the valve geometry may have not been setup correctly when the engine was assembled.... I personally would still be concerned and would remove the rocker assemblies and at least lay a straight edge across the valve stems to see if there is any major differences in height.. if there is, it's likely time for a valvejob.

Harry, you are correct in not wanting to drive the car, any contact with the retainer will wear the keeper and cause you to drop a valve in the cylinder, I have one on my key chain. Wish I read this two hours ago, I just finished a valve adjustment and would have been interested to look at the geometry to see what could be contacting the retainer, seems the adjuster should be keeping the rocker arm stood off from there, sounds like there isn't enough of the valve sticking out to maintain the proper clearance, were there caps on the valves? maybe one of those came off if the valves were out of adjustment, could also be side play in your rocker arms. Could be worn keepers allowing the retainer to ride up in the valve, whatever it is, it is a potential catastrophic failure. I am interested to hear what you find. V/R Darrell

Thanks to everyone who responded.

I didn't know that there were supposed to be caps between the valves and the adjusters...perhaps that is half of the problem, as I don't remember seeing anything like that. The car has been rather badly bastardized...bondo-heavy bodywork, butchered wiring, no thermostat,

009 distributor (that at least I have remedied), one piece windows that don't roll up correctly, the list goes on. Pretty much everything wrong with the car is something that a previous owner "improved," so I wouldn't be surprised if they had messed something up under the valve covers. When it was a daily driver I didn't have time to do much more than keep it running and now its in storage several hours away from where I'm living. Unfortunately it will be some time until I get back around to checking this out, several months I expect. Mainly I was just looking for things I may have overlooked, such as your suggestion about valve stem caps.

Peace, Harry

Harry, didn't mean to imply that you should have lash caps, they are mostly used with high performance rocker arms. Stock, I don't think they belong, it is really obvious if you have one missing when you compare to the other valves.

Ah, okay. The engine has a "stock" valvetrain to the best of my knowledge. I put that in quotes because it could easily be a strange mix of who-knows-what parts. Clearly the only solution is to take it apart and see what's going on, I was just hoping to hear from someone who had seen this particular phenomenon before.

I'm afraid I will have to leave you hanging for a while though. I work as a merchant mariner and am about to get on a ship for a few months. When I get home though I'm going to get my bug sorted out. I've been driving my new daily driver, a fullsize rearwheel drive behemoth of a Cadillac Fleetwood. It's great on the highway, but I went I visit my Bug in my storage shed yesterday and remembered how much I miss the old girl.