Turambar, did you ever confirm your ticking source?

 

It was...... spark plug with the terminal end broken off! I've been running on 5 cylinders this whole time and didn't even notice it! Luckily there doesn't seem to be any permanent damage, knock on wood.

 

How big a pain in the butt is it to change a lifter on a 996?

 

It is pretty involed and takes some specail tools, although you can fabricate them yourself and if your are inclined it is a DIY. Harder to do with the engine in the car, but not impossible. You have to take off the cam cover and the cams. You need a tools to lock the engine at TDC, but a pice of rod the right size will do it. Then a tool to hold the cams in place as the cam cover is part of what holds them in place. The tool goes for $200+ but you can fabricate on for only about $10 in materials. I have a drawing if you need it. Then you need another "special tool to hold the cam advance tensioner, again this can be made out of a piece of threaded rod for less than $10. Also "specail tools" to hold the cams in place when you remove the sprocket and tensioner, again I used some aluminum stock to make a tool. Once the cams are off then the lifters come right out. Technically you them need special tools to set the timing of the cams, but there is a shade tree mechanic way to mark the timing of the cams to avoid this. Again, I have done it.

New lifters cost about $50@. For 3.4's the intake and exahust lifters are the same, with 3.6 variocam plus the intake and exhaust are different. Another option is to send them to Flat 6 and they will rebuild/modify them, don't say exactly what they do but they say it will eliminate the problem. Cost is about $200 for all 12 intakes, and about $200 for all 12 exhaust.

Let me know if you are going to try it and I can give you some advaice/pointers.

 

We alter the internal valving of the lifters and make changes that help them resist clogging in the future that makes them not function correctly. I use these lifters in all the engines I build.

 

Dharm55,

Thanks for the info. I have the cdrom manual. If I tackle this I'll give you a holler. Own a machine shop so I should be able to make the tools. Might be selling the car due to need for a bigger car cause my wife got accepted into a grad program and now i'm gonna be carpool dad. Thanks for your reply.

Cheers,

Geoff

 

Turambar, don't worry about all this, almost 100% it's your EGR, it ticks on everyone's car and the question has been asked a bunch of times on this forum.

 

Sheesh another 4 year old resurrection...nice, though, because I wasn't aware of the loud ticking of EGR valves on these cars. Does replacing the egr valve usually remedy it if you want to kill the noise?