A friend of mine has a 1980s Golf, and the owner's manual requires that the valve clearance be checked every 15,000 miles. But for similar valve trains Toyota specifies 60,000 miles, and Nissan doesn't require any.
Have engines improved that much in 20 years, or was VW simply being conservative?
Probably depends on many thing but needing any valve adjustment at all means solid and not hydraulic lifters. These days hydraulic is pretty much everywhere. VW switched to hydro around '83 I believe it was.
Feel lucky, my dad used to rebuild his Bug engine every 20 or 40 000 miles (can't remember which)
As someone else mentioned hydraulic cam followers never need adjustment, just occasional replacement. Solid cam followers do need to be shimmed periodically. Most companies to my knowledge (including VW) specify that they should be shimmed every 15k miles, I believe this includes Honda, VW, and BMW.
That said, among Volkswagen's watercooled A chassis cars, only the A1 8V cars were equipped with engines with solid cam followers. The name "Golf" (at least in the US and Canada) did not exist until the A2, so it should have hydraulic followers. If you live outside of NA, and the car was made before 1985 they might be solid.
I don't know about BMW, but Honda and Toyota specify 60,000 miles for the disk (shim) type, 30,000 miles for the rocker arm type. Nissan gives no adjustment interval, and one person said that the clearances often stay within specs even for 300,000 miles.
So why does VW specify such a relatively short inspection interval for similar valvetrains with solid lifters? I realize that their reliability isn't as good, but I thought that engines were an exception.
It is an A1 and does say "Rabbit" on the back; I called it a "Golf" only because I wasn't sure if people were familiar with other name. I'm sure it has solid lifters because my friend showed me a pair of funny tools he uses to change out the adjustment disks.
Are you sure, you are speaking about pre-1980 Hondas and Toyotas? I seem to remember, here in europe was at least one toyota engine from those times, which needed valve adjustments every ~20,000km (or was it
24000?).
On the other hand, it does not necessary mean, that the valves will really need any adjustment at 15k. The recommendations usualy say "check and adjust if necessary".
Because valve lash that's out of spec can be bad for your engine. Too little lash and you can burn your exhaust valves. Besides, it's only an inspection interval. You check 'em, and the odds are that they don't need adjusting at all. If they do, then you adjust them. Whatsa matter, you afraid of feeler gauges? ;-)
I believe that most Hondas, Toyotas, and Nissans still have solid lifters. My 1998 Nissan 2.4L does, and the clearances are specified hot rather than cold as with most disk adjusters.
You are simply making an assertion and asking us to justify it. First, I'm not clear how the valvetrains are "similar". Most Honda engines I've seen have rocker arms, even OHC engines, while VWs don't. According to:
Point is, thats the number Volkswagen felt most comfortable publishing. It may be that the valve adjustments last just as long as any Toyota or Nissan, VW just recommends checking them, whereas Nissan and Toyota feel that their owners should remain blissfully ignorant of problems. Having seen a lot of Honda and VW engines, I can tell you, I think the 8V VW engines are more bulletproof than anything Honda made.
NOTE: I've ignored Nissan and Toyota because I don't know enough about them to say anything... I have had way too many experiences with "reliable" Hondas however. However, I will generically say I think it was pretty common in the early 80s to recommend valve checking/adjustment every 15k miles.
As far as I know, all the Rabbits have solid followers, so I wouldn't even have mentioned it if you hadn't said Golf.
I had an '80 new and at 15K one valve was barely tight, at 30K 2 others were slightly out (one was too loose - shim wear or valve recession?), and at 50K I took it in for the valve seal recall to fix the 500 miles/qt oil burning problem, and they included a valve adjustment. The ticket said 3 shims were changed but didn't say which or by how much. From then on I averaged a shim every 30K-45K. I have no idea if this is typical.
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