Posted by John Swensen on November 13, 2001 at 12:38:45:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Port Alignment posted by Klaus on November 13, 2001 at 09:04:20:
If there is too much down-travel to the valve, one can either use a thicker felt/cork under the valve button, or the valve stem can be shortened by machining a tiny bit off the end. If the valve is too low in the rest position, one can either use a thinner felt/cork, or the under side of the upper valve cap can be thinned, slightly. Since Bob Reeves claims accuracies in the low thousandths of inches, and since he, presumably, uses standardized sizes of pads for his high-tech felt/cork replacements, he removes a tiny bit of metal to adjust a valve to be aligned with one of a small number of pad thicknesses. By keeping records of each valve's pad thicknesses, a re-felt job just requires replacing each pad with the same thickness as he put on, originally, and does not require re-measuring.