jan the man

When i replaced all my lifters 2 years ago, i also soaked them in oil, it sounded like that for probaly 20 minutes or so. I thought i had done something wrong even shut engine off a couple times thinking i was damaging something. Noise eventually went away. All good now except, one lifter on the drivers side exhuast that will start to tic if i idle for too long, but goes away when i start driving.

Hope its just your lifters. good luck

good luck

Quadcammer

1 at idle is a little low.

Vorsicht

Here's an update. Ran the engine at idle for about 25 minutes. Also added another quart of oil. Checked the oil after temp was up and oil level is at mid dipstick. Now the bad news.

I watched the temp gauge go up to 9 o'clock and then fall. This was at the 15 minute mark. Then it steadily rose to 10. Then 10:30 and stayed there for 5 minutes. I could not tell if the oil cooler came on because of all the engine noise but my guess is no. At some point the oil light came on and I shut the engine down. The noise is still there and this is starting to look like an oil pressure issue. Suggestions?

Steve Weiner-Rennsport Systems

Did you split the case when you rebuilt the engine, or simply do a top end?

JM993

Especially at cold idle. Best of luck in finding the issue.

bobt993

If the oil temp went to 9 then fell your tstat opened to the front cooler when this happened. Oil pressure of 1 is low at idle. Check the chain tensioners and the oil tube feeding the cam towers on each side. You can install these upside down also so they won't pump up. The gasket that installs on the tensioner should be checked to make sure you are not obstructing the oil passage to the cam towers. Also check that you did not mix up the oil pressure relief valve springs/parts. I would take a plug out of each cylinder and turn this by hand to make nothing is binding. Steve brought up a good Q as to how far the motor was taken apart.

NP993

You can feel if the cooler is open by putting your hand near the cooler or feeling the top of the fender for heat. And you can feel if the cooler fan comes on by putting your hand under the grille on the bottom of the bumper and feeling for warm air blowing out.

Vorsicht

Just a top end. Did not split the case.

These are next on my list. When checking the tensioners can I just take off the 'cap' and see if the small openning is there feeding oil into the cap passage? So when checking for binding what should I look for? Slightly hard to turn? Very hard? Oil pressure relief valve was not touched.

I have confirmed that the fan for the oil cooler fan up front is not working. I used scantool and OBD1 calbe and then used the 'test outputs' function. What typically goes wrong with this unit?

Vorsicht

Also, I restarted and the pressure light did NOT illuminate.

Mike J

I doubt if its a tensioner or ramp - the noise sounds like its timed with the rotation of the engine, and given you did not split the case, its likely valve train, timing or head clearances. If you sent the heads out for machining, the only risk there is the change in the deck height if they machined a lot off the head to flatten it. That does not happen that much since you really need to machine a bit to have this happen. It can, but its unlikely. That leaves us with timing issues or valvetrain. If the timing is off, the place where you can get noise i the collision with the heads and valves, again unlikely unless you are wayyyy off. So the most likely is valve train, which is around lifter pressurization. I find that pre-filling in the lifters really does nothing, putting them into the rocker and installing them will allow most of the oil to drain anyways. I do find it more effective to pre-pressurize the system by cranking the engine over with the DME relay pulled -> I assume with a new engine rebuild you did this?

So the real question is to let it run a bit more to see if the lifter pressurize, or start to tear it down looking for visual clues? Tough one to answer, I would do a few things first like pull some easy to get at plugs just as a check to see how they look, I would then pull the DME relay and crank the engine to see if any metallic noises are made (it should be fairly quiet), and if you want to run it, I would spend some time trying to see where the noise is from using a mechanic's stethoscope (or in a pinch a long screwdriver held to the ear...). You can also do a quick compression test and if possible leakdown to see if the timing looks correct, if its way off the valves will not be seated at TDC.

Let us know how it goes, best of luck!

Cheers,

Mike

IXLR8

Normally 2 to 2 1/2 at idle, if I recall my gauge readings.

Vorsicht

Mike, I did do the pre-pressurization per Wayne's book. My first task is to troubleshoot the oil cooler fan issue and go from there.

Mike J

The idle pressure seems to vary a bit car to car, and also on oil weight/brand, and temperature. You are right though most of the cars I have worked on will idle at 2 or more, even a full temp.

You should install a fan override anyways, and you can use that. In the meanwhile, you can force the fan on by removing the right headlight and unplugging the sensor.

I think the oil-cooler fan issue is a red herring and not related to the mechanical noise of the engine. To me, that is the first problem to solve...

Cheers,

mike

Vorsicht

You are probably right. I switched the relay with the a/c and the fan now operates at slow and fast. Seeing the oil temp up so high freaked me out. The adventure goes on.

eddie_993

Well I was going to say that last summer when I didn't start my car for about a month, upon start up it was making a similar noise to yours. Probably not as loud but the valves were clearly ticking. It took about 2 significant drives for them to adjust to their normal sound.

I don't know if any of that helps, though, since it seems like you have another issue w/ the temperature/oil-cooler.