Hello Everyone,

My 145 has started having a strange problem that I wanted to get everyone's opinions about. The car is running a un-rebuilt B18 from a 1968 145. After performing a valve adjustment in the garage one day and putting on a new valve cover, I started it up and noticed that my B18 was running much more rough than it previously did at low engine speeds, especially when cold. When running at around 1000 rpm or so the engine shakes rather violently and it feels like something is out of balance. Nothing is off with the throttle response and the power of the engine seems about normal. My friend and I immediately thought that we may have lost a cylinder due to a loose spark plug wire but everything checked out fine. We checked several things:

- Triple checked the valves and all are sitting around .020 or so when cold.
- Did a compression test and all cylinders checked in at around 155-160.
- Checked the spark plugs - they were black (Carbs running too rich?) so we cleaned them up with a bit of paint thinner...didn't help the vibrations at all at low speeds. I may still try a new set of plugs to see if that may help.
- Checked the carbs...they seem to both running normally (we thought one may have had problems leading to the unevenness).

The only other symptoms is ticking which sounds to me like it is unusually loud valve clicking. This may be due to the new aluminum valve cover I put...I am going to put the old one on to see if that is the reason for the different clicking sound.

One possible explanation we have is that I may have a spun bearing that is going in the engine which is causing the unevenness. We do hear a slight whine when we crawl under the car but I don't know if I should attribute that to a bearing that is going or if that is simply the timing gears.

Anyway, with that long explanation, does anyone have anything else that we should check? Any other ideas of what might be causing the uneven running?