A little over a year ago our Mitsubishi Pajero suddenly started making a horrible rattling noise that was quite obviously coming from the valve gear. Luckily I was still close to home so I turned around and, while keeping the engine revs as low as possible, I headed back cursing all the while that my weekend was now shot to pieces.

After getting home from work that Friday I started the slow job of removing everything from the top of the engine that was restricting my access to the valve covers. It’s quite astonishing just how much there is to remove. Eventually I got one of the rocker covers off (I picked the easier side to tackle first) and the problem was immediately obvious.

One of the rockers had tipped over at about 45 degrees. I assumed that the lash adjuster must have collapsed to allow this to occur. Of  course the camshaft now had a distinct groove in it from the edge of the rocker. Next step was to remove the cylinder head so that I could work on it properly.

After removing the camshaft I made the trip of about 40km to the nearest reputable cam grinder to see whether the gouge left by the rocker arm could be repaired of if I had to try and locate a replacement cam shaft. As it turned out, they were able to grind enough off the camshaft to restore the surface, while still having just enough movement in the lash adjuster to be able to take up the slack.

Rather than try and repair the lash adjuster that had cause all this I decided to play safe and install a new set. The engine being a quad cam 24 valve design meant of course that there are also 24 lash adjusters.

The following weekend the car was back on the road and felt and sounded as good as new.

That’s not the end of the story though…