This is a troubleshooting technique if all of your outlets are live. What I mean is if you have a four-outlet valve with four zones, a six-outlet valve with six zones, etc….
For the four-outlet valve, there’s still an outlet every 90°; for a six, there’s one every 60°. It won’t affect the function of the valve adversely in any way and will still hit all zones.
Hypothetically:
There’s a valve sticking on one specific zone. We rotate the cam to see if the problem follows it. If it does, you will see a different zone sticking, and it’s most likely a mechanical issue. If it doesn’t, we have to look a little deeper into the actually design and setup of the irrigation system as a whole.
That said, there’s a slight modification that needs to be done in order to perform this task. The locator pin (on the valve top itself) that fits through the notch in the perimeter of the cam will have to be removed.
This can be done with a file, some side/gate cutters, etc. As you can see that’s what I used in the video below (I did a crappy job I know). Make sure the numbers on the cam are always facing up, we’re going 180° not upside down.
