Well, after a fun day at Englishtown (meaning beating on the car in the 1/4), I've developed a tick. Sounds like a lifter to me. I've had a slight lifter tick come and go for a while now, but this is much more pronounced and occurs at any engine speed. Lifter tick on start up has always been there, no big surprise, but this is different. Oil pressure is good, no changes. Temp is a rock solid 175-180 deg, as it always is. The car ran great today, in fact running a new best ET. I'm thinking I have a collapsed lifter. When I got home I put a screwdriver to each valve cover and to my ear and didn't hear the tick. When I put the screwdriver to the valley cover, yep, that's where the noise is coming from. So, should I try the old oil change with one quart of ATF substituted with a single viscosity oil like 30? Or should I do some more investigation first? If so, what techniques? Thanks!
Ken, if a lifter is ticking you gotta be able to hear it from the valve cover area. Put the screw driver against the head & not the cover. Then pull that cover & pull the rocker shaft off & check all the pushrods for a bent one & rocker arms for a loose one. If that's turns out OK then it's a lifter. If the lifter collapsed the oil change trick may work, but don't get your hopes up.
My nailhead had the same problem when I bought it. I was hoping it was a sticky lifter, but it turned out to be a chewed up cam lobe. The only way I found that out for sure was to pull the intake and valley pan and watch it as I turned the engine over. Not sure what other method you could use to diagnose the problem. The ATF is a good idea and it has worked for me in the past on other engines, but if the cam is chewed then you are just introducing more cam lobe metal flakes into the engine.
I got to thinking, if its a cam lobe then you should see evidence in the oil filter. Cut it open and take a accordian section of the filter and squeeze the oil out in a vise. If you see metal and it looks like tiny flakes then it is likely a camshaft. Thats what we used to do at Cummins.
I had the same noise, thought for sure it was a collapsed lifter, turned out to be a bent adjustable pushrod. The tip had snapped off, all the rest were fine, strangeo No:
Did some diagnosis this AM. Using a screwdriver on the head, I determined it was the passenger side. I pulled the valve cover and tried to push on the rockers to see if any seemed loose. All were tight, couldn't budge them. So I started her up and used the screw driver method the rockers themselves. The very first rocker forward on the passenger side was the culprit. Much louder than all the others! When running all the rockers had oil dripping off them, so it would seem the lube system is working ok. I also was slightly more than a quart down when I pulled the stick (and I admit I hadn't pulled it in a while). I added oil and the tick was still there. I expected this as I was running a steady 40 PSI pressure when cruising and I could still hear the tick. Using a method I read elsewhere on this forum, I set a long wooden dowel on the lip on the rocker on the pushrod side of the rocker and gave the other end of the dowel a few sharp raps with a hammer. Restarted it- ticking is gone! No valvetrain noise at all. I think an oil change with a new filter is immediately in order. I am running royal purple and I wonder if the synthetic loosened up some crap in the engine? Anyway, all seems OK at the moment. I had been meaning to put those finned aluminum valve covers on anyway. I guess now is as good a time as any! Thanks for the help and advice. And here's hoping that lifter noise stays gone!
Ken, I've been following this thread so I can learn. The dowel trick seems interesting and I've heard of that used on aircraft engines to "knock off crud from the valves" so you can get a good compression check. You mentioned that you use the dowel to give a good hammer wrap to the pushrod/lifter side. Is the intent to knock loose something that may have gotten jammed in the way? Please explain what this trick is meant to accomplish. Obviously it seems to have caused the "tick" to go away, but I'm still wondering "what" was accomplished. Thanks for entertaining my question! Rob
Well, I'm no expert, but I'll tell you how I understand it... Lifters are hydraulic and require oil pressure to fill them and expand to take up lash in the valve train. By rapping the rocker on the push rod side, the idea is to push out whatever crud might be blocking the orifice that receives the oil pressure. I'm sure other REAL experts might chime in here....
The next time you suspect that you've got some crud in one of your lifters, and you're "lucky" enough to be a quart low, add a can of Seafoam to your crankcase. It is good for flushing out those kinds of things. Cheaper and frowned upon by some is to do the same thing but with a quart of ATF. Run it a couple of hundred miles and then do a complete oil change. Make sure that you're using a quality filter. Fram is an excellent marketer of a very poor quality product. Go online and open Google in your browser and do a search of oil filter tests or comparisons. Wix consistently proves to do well and are readily available at NAPA stores as their house brand. ATF doesn't have any real detergent qualities to it, but its viscosity allows it to get into the tight places that the oil can't so it flushes out those small pieces of dirt that clog orfices. An old trick for cleaning the crud from an engine that you're just trying to get running is to drain the crankcase but leave the filter in place. Then pour another two quarts of new oil and two quarts of kerosene to the crankcase. Start the engine and let it idle for a couple of minutes. The braver you are, the greater the ratio of kerosene to oil you can use. ray: DO NOT under any circumstances rev up the engine or attempt to drive it like this. Then do a complete oil change. You'll really be amazed at the crud and shellac you can loosen and remove from your engine this way. I only do this on old cars that I plan on doing an overhaul to in the near future. GM also makes a top end cleaner that works well for knocking crud off valves and pistons. You pour it through the carburetor and it "steam" cleans the upper end. Just follow the directions on the can.
Dont do kerosene. It will loosen everything up and drop to the oil pan and all come out right? No, although it will loosen everything up it wont all get out of the engine in one oil change. If you were to attempt this I would do it with the "motor flush"/kerosene and oil 5 times, then drop the pan and clean the pickup . This gives it more and more time to dilute the crap the kerosene loosens up. I would still not recommend doing this to an engine, your just aggravating the problem. Kerosene can also wipe out your bearings, it is the main ingrediant in motor flushes. Don't do it.
Before I rebuilt my last engine, I idled it on straight kerosene for about 5 minutes. Smoked like hell! But it was nice working with clean parts. I'm with Goldboattail......unless you plan on assuming the risks, DON'T DO IT! Flushing an engine is asking for trouble. What happened with your lifter, was that a speck of dirt got lodged in the check valve inside the lifter, causing it lose pressure and collapse, not allowing it to take up the slack as it was designed to. When you rapped on it, that dislodged the speck of dirt and sent it on it's way to who knows where........perhaps to a spot where it will find it's way out and get stuck in the oil filter where it belongs. If you want to clean your crankcase, the best way is to do it slowly. Add some "marvel mystery oil" to your fresh oil change. Adding a qt. of tranny fluid is also a great way to accomplish this IMHO. Ever notice how tranny fluid will actually clean your hands? It will do the same thing to the varnish inside your lifters. But by flushing with kerosene it breaks down the sludge too fast and will circulate it all around inside there and likely cause seal leaks to happen and bad things like that. uzzled:
