Hey Carl, Interesting news! Sounds like you have found the problem being a lazy lifter since the Rislone took away the noise for a while. Bad Lifter has been and is a hot candidate for me too being the cause of the noise. Ive tried a adding a can of Wynns lifter treatment and a number of oil changes, but with no result. The oil tend to look clean even after some driving which gives the impression of a very clean inside of the engine, same thing with the inside of the valve covers. Whats left on my to do list is to try a full synthetic oil, I currently have a mineral Kendall 10-40w in the oil pan. Also very interesting when you say that the ticking disappears under load and shows up when letting off the throttle (without load), thats the exact same for me! If I put it in drive, hold down the brake pedal and then rev the engine it isnt there. Looking forward to hear about the sequel! Sure would be great if you could crack it! that would give me some hope too Good luck!
sounds like you going to be replacing some lifters.. not a bad job at all. might take a few hours if that. Paul 66larkgs turbo 401nailhead
Before you go swapping lifters and pouring additives in try this. Pull a valve cover off and check to see how sludgy the engine is. If there's just a little bit of sediment on the inside of the head you're ok, if not you're in for some torment, read the paragraph at the bottom. If there's only a little sediment go to Autozone and buy 2 or 3 of the oil change special that is going on for the week. Also buy the big bottle of Marvel Mystery oil I think its a quart but Im not sure. Change your oil and pour the whole bottle of Marvel Mystery Oil in. Marvel works like a super detergent and has brought back a lot of tapy nasty sounding engines for me. I know on the back it says not to use the whole bottle but trust me on this. Drive the car about 100-150 miles then take a light, go under the car, and start draining the oil. Hopefully the oil wont look too funky, shine your light into the oil as it drains you'll probably see little chunks of black crap coming out, or you'll see the flow of oil like shake or get slightly interrupted. Its hard to explain but it wont be a smooth flow. Now put a fresh filter and new oil in the engine and do the same thing again, this time you can drive it probably 200 or more miles if its not too filthy. But within 500 miles definitely drain it. If the engine isn't too dirty your tap should be nearly or totally gone by now. Its never taken me more then 3 tries sometimes the first bottle fixes it, but I do recommend doing it twice. Also don't leave the Marvel in. Sometimes it breaks up too much junk and you end up with new problems. The cause of most taps is a chunk of crud restricting or just straight up blocking oil flow to the orifice in the lifter and it cant pump up fully. The bright side to trying this is you'll have a much cleaner engine which is better for your new lifters. It would really suck to put new lifters in an engine just to have them get plugged up. And at the risk of starting a whole debate, yes Marvel does work better then ATF, Ive tried both and the Marvel just seems to clean better. If you pulled your valve cover and its just a big pile of crud in there your in for a lot of work. Really the right way is to rebuild it, but you can get most likely get by if you do a lot of work. You're going to have to drop the oil pan, pull the valve covers, intake, and valley pan cover off. Then take a scraper and start scraping all the crud off.Then take a shop vac and try to suck up as much of it as you can because you really don't want it ending up floating around in the engine once its together. Then you have to scrub out the oil pan, valley pan, valve covers, oil pump pick up, then buy some chem dip and soak your rocker arms and bolts. If you can figure a way out to keep the push rods in order soak them too. Then pull your lifters out and try to clean the lifter bores you're going to use a lot of brake cleaner and have to get creative with the scrub brushes. Now you have the option of soaking the lifters in Kerosene and see if they clean up enough to be used, or you can do what I would do and just replace them. Then re assemble....
Guys the engine is as clean as can be expected and there is no crud under the valve covers. I pulled the valve covers shortly after I got the car about 8 months ago and it was clean in the valve train area and under the valve covers. Today I pulled the covers again and the valve covers are bright and clean underneath and the valvetrain looks as clean as new. I pulled the latest fill of oil and Rislone and saw no real chunks or particals in the oil though the caramel color of the oil was turned almost clear after a quart of Rislone and 30 miles of driving the car. The crankcase has been refilled with 20/50 and a quart of MMO...we'll see if that has any effect. I've pulled the plugs that have been in the car for a month now and have approx 100mi on them...they are almost new with no noticeable difference between them. I'm using Autolite 85's. Tomorrow I'll be listening around the engine with the heater hose and some help on the throttle from my wife. I'm out for a blast before the rush hour traffic sets in.
i'll place my bet on exhaust leak, although, if correct, it is odd that the mech didn't suggest that. you can check valve lash with the valve cover removed.
Nailheaders I took the Riviera out for a cruise yesterday and ended up at my mechanic's shop where we shot the bull for a while. We put the car up on a lift so he could get up close and intimate with the passenger side exhaust where the noise seems to be coming from. He has worked on the car before and was baffled at the fact that the ticking could be heard INSIDE the car but not outside or under the car. He used his automotive stethoscope and he started hunting under the car while I feathered the throttle in order to get the ticking started. You have to load and unload the engine in order to get the ticking started. After about 10 minutes of digging Mike (my mechanic) says he's pretty confident that the ticking is coming from the fuel pump...my newly installed NOS AC pump. Specifically, he thinks it may be the eccentric that drives the pump or a gap that exists between the eccentric and the pump arm itself that may be skipping on the eccentric rather than riding smoothly on it. I'm taking the car back into Mike on Friday to look closer at the fuel pump and to install a rear main seal. With all of the Rislone I've been running, it seems to have freed up the dam that was holding the oil back at the rear main. When this job is performed I'll take a look at the oil pickup screen to see if there is any buildup there that would be causing the engine to starve for oil. Does the 425 have a rope rear main seal? Is there a solid replacement for it as there is for the Chevy's and Pontiac's? more later
Before you incur the expense of replacing the rear main run the car for a few hundred miles with 100% oil in the crankcase to see how, or if, it will affect the oil leak...especially if you unintentionally overfilled the crankcase by adding the additive. Did you try shorting the cylinders one at a time while re-producing the ticking? Did you try disconnecting the fuel return line while checking the fuel pump? Tom Mooney
thanks Tom the first order of business on Friday is to remove the fuel pump and run the engine to see of the ticking is still there. I changed oil in the car and am running straight oil now...thanks Hopefully we'll find something simple more later
I hope you put zddp additive in the new oil.... if not , you will eventually lose the engine..... Yes the nailhead uses the rope seal on the rear main.... and yes there is a neoprene replacement....
I have the neoprene seals in stock. It includes directions & the sealer I use. Easier to install the new seal than it is to remove the rope seal. If it's leaking after what has been done it will more than likely not stop. You could try putting in a pint of brake fluid to the new oil along with the ZDDP additive. The brake fluid will help to "Swell" the seal. If it doesn't stop you won't have wasted any real $$$$$$. Tom T.
Doc I have been running Brad Penn oil with ZDDP. I ran the oil with Rislone and it did prove effective in removing small particals from the engine. the engine now has 20/50 oil with no additives and the leak seems to have subsided quite a bit. tomorrow my mechanic will focus on finding the tick and if it can be identified then the rear seal will be addressed. if the motor has to come out then well do the main seal later. more info soon
20/50 is what i run in my import engines here in so cal. I ran 20/50 to see if it would slow the rear main leak faster than the Brad Penn 10/30 i was using and it seems to have helped. I also ran it to see if it would quiet the ticking noise down (which seems to have happened). it'll be back to 10/30 once we get the rear main seal replaced and the ticking identified.
Re: Riviera 425 engine ticking noise PROBLEM FOUND well...after poking around the engine with a auto stethoscope my mechanic and I pinpointed the ticking noise at the front of the engine near the fuel pump. we yanked the NOS AC fuel pump and made a homemade blockoff plate and used my old ratty elec fuel pump in order to determine if the pump was the culprit.......it was. when we removed the fuel pump, there was a wear pattern that already developed on the pump arm. With less than 100mi on the pump that much wear would seem excessive. This morning we're putting a standard NAPA pump on to see if the problem is with the pump or maybe the eccentric that drives it. If the eccentric is the culprit I may just keep an electric fuel pump in line until I have a real reason to pull the front timing cover. more developments later thanks to all on the board for the suggestions on solving the problems.
Hey Carl, that is good news! Since you mentioned the fuel pump as a one of the candidates for this noise I have been thinking more and more about that this is one of the leads I never really followed up Very glad that you have cracked the problem, not much beats that feeling! :beer
One time, I short blocked a rambler engine at the dealership shop and when I got it running again it had a ticking that I couldnt pin down.... took a couple of days... but when I finally found it, it was the fuel pump.... it was one of those that had 2 vacume hoses coming out to boost the vacume WW motor and I had crossed those lines.... reversed the lines and the ticking disappeared....
update....the good, the bad and the ugly the good...the ticking goes away when the mechanical fuel pump (NO$ GM AC PUMP) is removed. We wired in an elec fuel pump and all is well. the bad...my mechanic installed an Airtex mechanical fuel pump to see if the original mechanical pump was just bad. he removed the temporary elec fuel pump and installed the Airtex brand pump. It caused the same ticking the NOS AC pump did and while running the engine, and looking under the car, my mechanic noticed the steel fuel lines pulsating (hard) causing the steel fuel lines to not only rap against the frame but they also resonate the ticking of the pump throughout the frame...sounds like the "Riviera Rattle" that was mentioned earlier in this thread. He thinks the fuel pick up may be clogged causing the pump to work harder than it should. I'll be dropping the tank soon and doing some paint work to the under chassis. I'll be installing a restored fuel tank and a new sending unit and will see what the old fuel pickup looks like then. the ugly...my mechanic decided to spend 4 hrs looking for the tick and ran up quite a fat bill. After discovering the fuel line rattling problem he put sections of vacuum line rubber around the fuel line in problematic areas. Not pretty and I still have the tick as before just not quite as bad....about half of the noise as it was originally. I think I'll be building a blockoff plate (or sourcing one) and then installing an elec fuel pump near the tank. Also, I think that the fuel pump eccentric in the motor is hitting the pump arm too hard creating more of an impact than it should and, until I decide to pull the front of the motor for a timing chain or cam, I'll take a closer look at the eccentric then. any suggestions on an elec fuel pump? I've heard that the Mallory 140 is best? Comments?
