clicking, ticking head, help!

[austen]

I posted a while back about my head having a clicking/rattle sound after getting warmed up but I never really followed through with anything or got any good information to start any kind of diagnosis.

Anyway, I have a 782 turbo head on my spirit right now with the rattle issue. I have an extra random G-head laying around in my garage that used to be on the car before I swapped the different head and turbo on it. I was wondering if any of the parts on the donor G-head would be worth swapping over onto the head on the car now to try and fix the problem.

video of the tick
*kinda hard to hear


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8F1X4pyyuk



donor g-head pics

http://i49.tinypic.com/neu8p.jpg

http://i46.tinypic.com/2j47ql2.jpg


Any info would be great,
thanks!

[austen]

anyone?

[zin]

Near as I can tell, it sounds like a lash adjuster has collapsed or at least partly so, causing the tick. I'm assuming good oil pressure and such.

If you don't mind spraying oil around, and I'd suggest having a helper so you don't have to fling oil any more than you have to, you can run the car with the valve cover off and just touch each of the "lifter" side of the rocker arm, you should be able to detect which one is "loose" allowing it to tick.

A good fix for this are the "PT" "lifters"/lash adjusters, they have a bigger bleed hole in them which lets them expel air better, which is what is allowing yours to collapse... Be aware though that they are not a "drop-in" fix, they require shims/washers to correct the installed height (they are a bit shorter than stock, but otherwise identical) OR, just install some new stock style, though they can/will do the same thing if the source of the air "contamination" is still there...

BTW, if you do the swap, be sure to keep the rockers matched to their respective lobes on the cam. This is critical on a slider, but just good practice with the roller style.

Hope that helps!

Mike

[turbovanman²]

Turn the coolant fan off, grrr.

That's pretty bad, I would check your oil pressure first with a REAL gauge, if ok, take off the valve cover and see if you can push down the lifters or see if any are spongy. If they are, replace with PT's.

[RoadWarrior222]

Is this car getting run?

Was it left to sit for a while? Was the oil run lowish?

Just trying to get an appreciation of whether this is a real problem or not... If it was not run for a while, or was run low on oil and you noticed this at warm idle and paranoia is stopping you from running it... then it might just be air in one of the lifters, and the problem may go away if you hold the RPM at 2500 for a couple of minutes, which will pump enough oil through to bleed it out..... But if you have continued to drive it every couple of days and the problem has persisted over a couple of weeks, then it may be a bad lifter...

There's a thing where you can expect them to bleed down enough to rattle when you don't run them more often than once a week, and also idling it once a week is not enough, needs to see some RPM to fully pump. So if you've just been idling it "for maintenance" then it might go away with RPM. But if you've actually been driving it, then it's probably not that.

[austen]

Near as I can tell, it sounds like a lash adjuster has collapsed or at least partly so, causing the tick. I'm assuming good oil pressure and such.

If you don't mind spraying oil around, and I'd suggest having a helper so you don't have to fling oil any more than you have to, you can run the car with the valve cover off and just touch each of the "lifter" side of the rocker arm, you should be able to detect which one is "loose" allowing it to tick.

A good fix for this are the "PT" "lifters"/lash adjusters, they have a bigger bleed hole in them which lets them expel air better, which is what is allowing yours to collapse... Be aware though that they are not a "drop-in" fix, they require shims/washers to correct the installed height (they are a bit shorter than stock, but otherwise identical) OR, just install some new stock style, though they can/will do the same thing if the source of the air "contamination" is still there...

BTW, if you do the swap, be sure to keep the rockers matched to their respective lobes on the cam. This is critical on a slider, but just good practice with the roller style.

Hope that helps!

Mike

Thanks for the response, Mike! I'm gonna take you up on that advice and fire it up with no valve cover over the weekend and go from there. I'll post back and let you know how it goes.

---------- Post added at 04:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:30 PM ----------


Turn the coolant fan off, grrr.

That's pretty bad, I would check your oil pressure first with a REAL gauge, if ok, take off the valve cover and see if you can push down the lifters or see if any are spongy. If they are, replace with PT's.

Thanks for the reply. If the lifters turn out to be garbage, are the lifters in my donor head swappable on the 782 that's on it right now?

---------- Post added at 04:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:35 PM ----------


Is this car getting run?

Was it left to sit for a while? Was the oil run lowish?

Just trying to get an appreciation of whether this is a real problem or not... If it was not run for a while, or was run low on oil and you noticed this at warm idle and paranoia is stopping you from running it... then it might just be air in one of the lifters, and the problem may go away if you hold the RPM at 2500 for a couple of minutes, which will pump enough oil through to bleed it out..... But if you have continued to drive it every couple of days and the problem has persisted over a couple of weeks, then it may be a bad lifter...

There's a thing where you can expect them to bleed down enough to rattle when you don't run them more often than once a week, and also idling it once a week is not enough, needs to see some RPM to fully pump. So if you've just been idling it "for maintenance" then it might go away with RPM. But if you've actually been driving it, then it's probably not that.


It's getting driven, gets me to work and back and sees boost frequently. Definitely had its time to bleed out if that were the case. It's been an on-going problem now for a while.

Good lookin' on getting that question squared away though.

Thanks

[black86glhs]

Yes the lifters from the g head will swap over.

[PunKid]

It almost sounds like an exhaust manifold gasket leak

[22shelby]

^^ what he said, sounds like an exhaust manifold leak... or worst case scenerio the HG poped out the back of the block, but i highly doubt that...

does it go away at all?? or just one day started ticking and been doing that for a while... getting progressivly worse???

[RoadWarrior222]

It almost sounds like an exhaust manifold gasket leakI thought I had one of those once, went slow for like 3 blocks, straining forward trying to hear what that damn noise was, seemed the slower I went the louder it got, which was odd, then suddenly....




beep beep beep....




... The VW bug that had been following me and was now right on my arse, got pissed off wondering why I was going so slow :D

[zin]

When you do, you can limit the mess by making a shield of sorts out of cardboard in roughly the shape of the "curtain" used under the TBI valve cover, it won't stop it all, but does help, especially if you end up doing it alone!

Good luck!

Mike

[RoadWarrior222]

Yeah, or if you have a ton of shabby valve covers you could decapitate one.

[austen]

Alright, so I scratched the idea of rigging up some kind of concoction to fire it up without a VC and decided to go right into replacing my lifters.

Maybe I'm just too much of a noob but I need some help in putting the cam back in. I tried marking where everything was but its not working out to well. After I fastened the cam down I put a socket on the cam gear and manually turned it over a few times to make sure everything was working properly. Then I noticed the 2 cam seals on both sides were all out of whack and not sitting properly. Also, can't get timing belt back on cam gear.

Help!! haha

[Vigo]

Well..

First i will say you dont have to remove the cam to change the lifters. It is possible to take the rocker arms out with nothing more than a large screwdriver.

Anyway, do you mean that you have the timing belt tensioner all the way back and still cannot get the belt slid back on the cam gear? I usually find it easier to put the belt on with the tensioner OFF (as in removed completely) and then put back with the belt on, but this depends on whether your original timing covers are all present or not.

[austen]

If I could go back in time I probably would have done that but I figured I would go with my gut instinct and do it the old school way.

My timing belt cover is off. Is there any specific way that the cam drops back in?

Also, the tenioner is backed out all the way. +1 on taking it off completely, will try that tomorrow.

[austen]

:bump2:
need to get car running asap for work.

[zin]

I'll try to help here... the seals should just seat in the cam caps, you may need to remove the cam gear to seat them as well as applying a thin coating of anabolic sealer to them to prevent them from leaking.

As for the timing belt, I suspect that you've got it on the wrong side of the tensioner. If routed that way, there isn't quite enough slack to get it back on the gears, and it will rub. The belt should be on the inside of the tensioner...

Somewhere there is a link to a YouTube video Cordes did showing how to time everything, but I couldn't find it, but I'm sure if you PM him, he'll be happy to point you in the right direction.

Mike

[austen]

Update!

I got everything successfully back on including timing. Runs good.

I got a bit of an oil problem now. My guess is either one of two things and I hope to God it's not my turbo.

As you can see the mishap here
http://i46.tinypic.com/bebgjm.jpg

As you can see the circle in red, if I recall correctly doesn't that need a check valve? For the longest time its had a line from that back into my intake. :-/ When I took it for the test drive I had that open how you can see it in the picture. Could this be my culprit?
http://i48.tinypic.com/1h9umt.jpg

Butttttttt, I had a 90 degree elbow coming off my turbo also when I went for a drive and I found this. Maybe just found its back in there when under boost sucking in air when that valve was spraying oil?
http://i45.tinypic.com/15n96jk.jpg


any quick advice would be awesome, need it running tomorrow.:hail:

[austen]

Problem resolved hopefully. Broken valve cover gasket.

Thanks for all the replies!