firstly whats the difference between single and double overhead cams?? and secondly how do i know which i have?!? cheers

 

Uh, at the risk of sounding snotty, the difference between SOHC ("Single Overhead Cam") and DOHC ("Dual Overhead Cam") is an extra camshaft! (Sorry, couldn't resist).

Seriously, though, that's a great question. The difference really is that in an SOHC engine, there is a single cam shaft that is used to open and close all of the intake and exhaust valves. Depending on the engine, there can be a total of 2 to 4 valves per cylinder. For instance, my '92 1.5L has 16 valves - 2 exhaust and 2 intake for each cyl.

In a DOHC, there will be two cam shafts. Now, I'm not sure how Honda DOHCs are setup (mine is an SOHC), but think of it this way- with a DOHC, each cam is responsible for one half of the valves. That *probably* means that one runs the intakes and the other runs the exhausts, or something like that.

How do you tell which you have? I'm not sure with the Honda - sorry. I know my SOHC just says "16 Valve" on the valve cover. The DOHC might have that stamped on the engine somehwere.

Hope that helps...

 

itll say dohc on the head if u have dohc. Dohc has two cams, an intake cam and an exhaust cam.

 

Camshafts... it'll have two camshafts

 

the dohc usualy says dohc on it, but another way to tell is that on the dohc the spark plugs are right in the middle with a little cover over them and the exsaust and intake cams are on both sides of the spark plug wire. for sohc the plugs are either in the back twords the intake manifold in another words non v-tec

and with v-tec sohc the plugs are on the front of the valve cover

somebody should get a pic of the two and label them...

 

Shouldn't there be 2 cam gears?

 

yes

 

I sure hope so...