Lifters are making a lot of noise...Please help!

[DamnedButDetermined]

I just rebuilt my cylinder head and reinstalled it. once i cranked it up the lifters imediately started making a loud rattling noise. Normally this is due to lack of oil. I checked the dipstick and oil level is perfect. I took it to a mechanic and he said the oil pump is building the right amount of pressure at the oil pressure sensor, but it isn't making it up to the cylinder head. He recommended adding 1/2 qrt ATF and driving it for a little bit, so i did and it is still just as lound. I bought some Gunk Oil Flush and the noise is still there.

How can I clean out my oil passages without taking the entire cylinder head off again????? B/c That was a huge pain in the ***!

Please help me here. Thanks in advance,
-DbD-

[240Stilo]

Haha, you just can't stop finding something wrong on your car. You really live up to your SN cuz you sure are damned and determined. Sorry I don't have any advice to give you but I wish the best of luck. :D

[old_s13]

When I rebuilt my SOHC KA head, I re-installed everything and had some serious clacking from the valvetrain (lifters), the car sounded like a Mercedes-Benz diesel sedan. I had an oil gauge, so I knew pressure was okay.. and I obviously had oil in the car. It is normal for the hydrolic lifters to make noise until they get oil again. During this process, there is air in the lifters that must be bled.. this happens automatically. I let the car idle for a while, that really didnt help too much. I am talking 10-20 minutes of idling, it was quieter but not by much. The only time the air was FULLY bled was when I took the car out for a drive. Once you put some load on the car you'll notice the noise gets less and less. I drove around for maybe 10-15 minutes, floored it a bit here and there (not to redline, just putting load on the motor) and soon enough, it was all gone.

Hope it works for you..

- Mike

[DamnedButDetermined]

Originally posted by old_s13
When I rebuilt my SOHC KA head, I re-installed everything and had some serious clacking from the valvetrain (lifters), the car sounded like a Mercedes-Benz diesel sedan. I had an oil gauge, so I knew pressure was okay.. and I obviously had oil in the car. It is normal for the hydrolic lifters to make noise until they get oil again. During this process, there is air in the lifters that must be bled.. this happens automatically. I let the car idle for a while, that really didnt help too much. I am talking 10-20 minutes of idling, it was quieter but not by much. The only time the air was FULLY bled was when I took the car out for a drive. Once you put some load on the car you'll notice the noise gets less and less. I drove around for maybe 10-15 minutes, floored it a bit here and there (not to redline, just putting load on the motor) and soon enough, it was all gone.

Hope it works for you..

- Mike


Those are exactly the same symptoms that I am suffering with. Extremely loud clankig from the lifters. I have let it idle for about 15 minutes total so far and driven it about 10 miles. I have put a good sized load on it when i was driving, but like you,no redline action, and it still is loud. Since i just used the Gunk oil flush I have no oil in my system right now, but i will be getting a new filter and oil so i can go out for another drive and hopefully this will cure the problem.

thanks a lot Mike for your help!

240stilo,
haha I guess you have seen the last like ten postes:D I don't remember how i came up with my screen name, but I can bet money that it had to do with my car :bash:

[DamnedButDetermined]

well this freaking sucks! I drove the car for at least 13 miles and it took about twenty minutes. The engine is still just as loud and I found a new problem.

When i am accelerating at half throttle it seems a little sluggish but it will rev up just fine, but when i am at full throttle it will rev to 4000 the same way, but then it will not go any further and the intake noise gets a lot louder all of a sudden. You would think the engine would misfire or something but the noise just gets louder and the engine will not rev any higher.

I am almost thinking that my crankshaft and camshaft are not timed right and so that the piston is going down when it should be at top dead center or something like that. When i put the timming chain back on I made sure the knock pin on the camshaft sprocket was at the top. I also lined up the crankshaft pully timming marks so that the second mark from the right lines up with the pointer on the block. I am pretty sure this is what the chiltons manual i was looking at ment, but I would love to have some confirmation. I then pulled the timming chain up so that the right driver's side of the chain was tight when the sprocket was placed back on the camshaft.

I am getting so frustrated by this project! Please help me in any way you can!

-DbD-

[deviousKA]

ok you say you rebuilt YOUR cylinder head right? so your lifters are not new they are used. what was the reasons for rebuilding the cylinder head (symtoms)? the procedure for bleeding the lifters is running at 1500-2000 rpm for 10-20min. if your lifters continue to rattle after this, one, some, or all are bad. they can be checked by removing them and inspecting to make sure they are all "springy" (just fyi: there are no springs inside). if any are solid and do not move at least .040" they are defective. this is also the reason for your engine not running properly, the valve lash is way out of spec. take your rocker assembly off and see how many are bad. you can get them used at scrap yard because now you know how to check them, or you can buy new cheapest ive seen is $10-20 a piece, you need 12

edit, btw: sounds like you set up your crank and camshaft properly. although you should have also lined up the 2 marked links on the chain with the punched dots on the top and bottom chain sprockets. they will line up just for setup purposes, after you turn it over the links wont land in the same place for a while

[old_s13]

Lining up the links on the timing chain as specified in the FSM and then installing the oil pump/distributor was always the hardest part about taking apart the KA, it was SOOOO finickey. Just make sure you double check that, and your timing.

As for the lifters, they are NOT supposed to have any play (air in them), they should feel SOLID when on the car. If you push down and they move a bit (even 1mm),then there is air in the lifter. If the air is not leaving the system, you COULD have bad lifters.. you MAY need new ones, depends on the mileage of the motor. I ended up buying new lifters later down the road, facking $150 or so worth of parts, jeeez.. what a waste. I ended up just trashing my KA later down the road..

Just inspect things. How's your oil pressure, do you have a gauge?

- Mike

[DamnedButDetermined]

When i took the rocker arms off I thought all of them had a little play but I may not have checked them all. By play i mean if I squeezed really hard they barely moved but rebounded back to their original position.

When you say i was right about my timming chain installation...I just want to be sure I lined up the timming marks on the crankshaft pulley properly. TDC is when the second from the right notch in the pulley is lined up with the timming mark on the block correct????

I will take off my lifters and see what i find. Thanks for the help so far.

-DbD-

[DamnedButDetermined]

ok here is what i have found...

Camshaft knock pin set at top (indicating TDC compression stroke [I think])

cylinder #1
Intake Both lifters loose w/ rebound
Exhaust Moved down but didn't rebound

cylinder #2
Intake Both lifters loose w/ rebound
Exhaust No movement cam is comming up

cylinder #3
Intake No movement cam is comming up
Exhaust Both lifters loose w/ rebound

cylinder #4
Intake Both lifters loose w/ rebound
Exhaust Both lifters loose w/ rebound

When i say the lifters are loose I mean they are farly easy to push down. Both of the rocker arm shafts are installed and torqued to spec.

I looked in the chiltons manual I got from the library, under Valve Lash and it says to check the clearance between the cam lobe and the lifter with a feeler gauge. But I thought the lifter was the part that touches the top of the valve, and pushes it down. If that is the case then the lifter never touches the camshaft. Please explain this to me.

It says that if the clearances are not to spec then you should do something with the adjusting shims? I might have an idea what they are talking about by adjusting shims, is that the part that physically touches the cam lobe?

Hopefully by this information someone could provide some more useful information.

-DbD-

[Bill Roberts]

This is the way it has to happen...Look at the animation down the page.

hope this helps/

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/camshaft2.htm

The only difference is the lifters are riding in there.

[DamnedButDetermined]

thanks for the animation...I forgot that the DOHC engine has the camshaft directly over the valves. And the chiltons manual only describes what to do for valve lash for the DOHC motor.


Anyone else with helpful info?

[deviousKA]

there should be a least .040" push on the lifters. They should be removed to check. any time the rocker assembly is removed, you may have to bleed the lifters. If they have "air" in them and move, they are most likely good and just need to be bled

[old_s13]

I dunno, I recall that my lifters did not move AT ALL when they were bled.

- Mike

[IchigoMae]

i hav a scratch on the inner wall of where the lifter(cylinder looking thing)seats in. will that pose a problem?

[deviousKA]

Originally posted by old_s13
I dunno, I recall that my lifters did not move AT ALL when they were bled.

- Mike

thats because if they were bled, they were installed on head with cam. on the back side of the cam they are taking up the valve lash, on the lobe side they are pushing down the valve. when they are not installed they should have more movement than during operation (after bleeding).

if your lifter cylinder has a scratch it may or may not be damaged, you will know if your lifters tick, if they dont, nothing to worry about

[DamnedButDetermined]

First off, I would like to say THANK YOU to all that helped in your own little way.

I finally finished my cylinder head replacement project after a whole month of down time. I could have reduced this by a long shot had i been more motivated and more educated.

Do you really want to know what my lifter problem was? You will think less of me if I tell you... Well when I installed the rocker arms onto the rocker arm shafts I put the intake arms onto the exhaust shaft and exhaust on the intake shaft :doh: . None of the oil holes matched up with the rocker arms so the lifters couldn't get oil. I can't believe I didn't notice this at installation, but, what are you going to do?

Final thoughts...The engine runs great now. I have finally gotten my idle down to 750 (it just wouldn't go down using the idle adjuster with the old cylinder head [I took it off and cleaned it along with all removed parts]). Engine sound nice and quite, but the effeciant redline has been reduced to 5300 (I can notice a steep drop off in power after that}.

One weird thing is that when i do a widce open throttle run I can tell a slight lag in power at 4000-4500 then it builds back up again to 5300 rpm. Not quite sure what is causing this but it might just be the 93 hardbody's cam profile?

One more thing my intake has a different growl now...It gets louder lower in the rpm range and is a little higher in pitch.

Oh well my name holds true, I was damned to begin with but determination saw me through!

-DbD-

[deviousKA]

that power drop off is most likely caused by that hardbody cam. i dont know the exact difference in the cams but i know the redline is brought down a bit. still doesnt explain that lag 4000-4500rpm but im sure youll figure it out eventually. luckily you got it all straightened out, good luck

[reeskm]

I know I'm resurrecting an old thread here, but I'm pretty sure I'm having HVLA problems...

While researching exactly what I'm supposed to do, I've come across basically the best ever description in the S15 FSM. Look in the Engine Mechanical section and they have an extremely well documented instructional section with full pictures, specs, and what you should expect when trying to bleed or fix your HVLA on SR20DET/SR20DE type engines.

An interesting thing that was noted was that HVLA *cannot be bled in any way by running the car*. I'm not sure how true this is cause I'm sure some peeps have had success doing it. But after having looked at the FSM, it seems pretty trivial for even a backyard mechanic to go through this procedure if they have a torque wrench and intermediate experience.

Correct procedure to bleed the lash adjusters is to remove them, and submerge them in new engine oil. Next, take a thin rod and insert it top down through the valve until it hits the 'marble' bearing in the bottom of the valve. This should cause oil to enter the valve and fill it with oil... Then the trick is to *not lay the HVLA on it's side again* and instead immediately install it upright in your heads so that the oil dosen't drain.

Good luck to anybody that needs this work done! I hope when I'm done it makes a world of difference.

[frosti108]

^^^ so is this the same thing we should do for the ka24e? submerge them in oil, and poke that little hole with a needle? then put them right back on without turning them on their side....