Took a running engine apart to do some head work, Had 1000 miles on new cam ad lifters, motor was running quiet. drained oil out took pan off. Pre-lubed engine. never touched cam & lifters. Started it up, sounds like all the lifters are rattling. Adjusted the valves twice. hoping the lifters will quiet down. never had an engine do this. any ideas. Ago
loosen up the rockers till they clack then wait till till oil flows freely from the pushrod holes then do the running valve lash on them I then lash them and loosen them 3 times to make sure they are filled . it allows them to pump up and gets rid of any trapped air .
the cheaters way id to use a plews pump with a rubber tip and pump oil back down thru the push rod to the lifter with rocker removed it takes sveral squirts to pump the lifter up .
Did you submerge the lifters in oil and depress them? If not, it would be a good idea so that they are full of oil.
Is it for the Hemi in your avatar? If so, it may be faulty lifters. I put two sets in that came in plain, white, unmarked boxes, and had a couple of failed lifters in each set. Not wanting to trust that anymore, I switched the cam to solid lifters, and things have been fine. Good luck.
You are supposed to soak new lifters in oil overnight to fill them up. Could you take the lifters out and put them in a pan of oil? Heat it up and they will fill faster.
Could your rocker arms and/or valves be binding up? Are things loose when you re-adjust? Did you change your rocker arm ratio?
I bought a rebuilt nailhead longblock that had been sitting for several years. Took it all apart and cleaned everything, put it together and 6 of the lifters wouldn't pump up. Took the lifters apart and there is a small disc shaped check valve in them that was stuck to the bottom of the plunger and wouldn't let the oil come in. Cleaned those 6 up and put them back in and all was ok. You may be have a similar problem.
If the engine was running quietly recently, it doesn't make sense to just start making lifter noise now. The above mentioned oil pressure might be an issue, since the pan was off, or there is something amiss with the new head work. Maybe the pickup got bumped loose, or, it could be bad lifters in the end.
Another way to pre-lube hyd lifters----- Get a new,small Tupperware container & fill it with clean oil of your choice,and 1 lifter. Put an old,clean pushrod in your drill press & gently pump each one of the lifters up.You can see the air coming out & also feel for anything funny when depressing the plunger as well. Leave all the lifters 'under oil' in a different container until you're ready for them---and don't turn the drill press on.
From your description I'd Be more Inclined to think it was a oil feed problem instead of a lifter problem. It's hard to imagine all the lifters going bad But it's pretty easy to see if they were not getting oil , they wouldn't work.
OP didn't mention engine make but I'm guessing that it's a SBC..Maybe he put the dist in the wrong place [orientation, don't know for definate fact but I read it on the HAMB not too long ago] and the body is blocking oil supply to the lifters..
That can happen on them SBCs all you need to do is a few things wrong to create the perfect mistake. Although it involves taking the distributor apart and assembling it wrong too. That little groove in the dizzy body splits oil flow from the port behind it to both sides of the lifters and there's a place where the grove is blocked.
Yes, it is for one of my 354 Hemis. The motor totally rebuilt with new cam & lifters, was running fine and quiet before. never touched the cam or lifters. Pulled the heads to switch heads with Stainless valves. Pulled the pan down to install a baffle. 85 lbs oil pressure. I will try loosening the valves. It might be air in the lifters. like I said motor was quiet before head change. Ago
I'm going though something similar with my hemi. I had the heads refinished and new cam and lifters. The shop put in the wrong valve seals and also put them on the exhaust valves. I have valves sticking sounds like lifter noise. Just something else you might want to check.
Can you pull the valve cover, and just pour engine oil down a pushrod, filling up the lifter pocket (do Hemis have lifter pockets?) while pumping it manually with the pushrod? If you can just pump all the lifters up by hand, and drain the excess oil, problem solved and costs maybe a few bottles of oil and new cover gaskets. And if you find them already pumped up, you know there's another issue. Are you sure the oil pump is primed? Some years ago I built an engine and forgot to prime the oil pump. Fortunately I remembered before firing the engine, but no way was I gonna tear it back open. I poured 10 bottles of extra oil in the engine and let it sit a bit until the pump filled. Then I drained it to the full mark and cranked the engine over without spark. I had oil pressure immediately.
Seems to me if you didn't remove the cam or lifters, they shouldn't have bled down. Removing and installing the push rods shouldn't cause the lifters to bleed down. I would look for problems in the changes you made. You only changed the heads, and didn't touch the cam and lifters. Look at your valve lash again. Spring bind? Valve seal to retainer clearance? Rocker arm and valve tip geometry? Anything that interferes with free valve movement will induce valve tic in a hydraulic lifter set up. I had valve covers rub on rocker arms one time. Drove me fucking crazy trying to cure valve tic. I kept tearing the covers off and looking at valve parts. Finally fired the engine with covers off to see what the problem was. It made a mess, but ran fine. Looking at the covers for the first time revealed a very small rub mark from several rocker arms.
Years ago I put a 3 keyway timing set to advance the cam timing in my 351M Ranchero to get it to run a bit better. Never had the valve covers off & only pulled the oil pan because you had to on that engine to replace the timing set. I thought the lifters would never pump up again after I got it going again. It had good oil pressure but the lifters wouldn't pump up. Had to be some air somewhere. After about 30 minutes or so they finally quieted down. Been quiet for the last 10 yrs.
Well ,that is sort of a possibility. I assume the OP knows the sequence to setting valves. If that isn't done right you will definitely get valve noise, and possibly ruin the cam. I've seen a guy ruin a cam shaft because he just installed everything and without finding the base circle to adjust each valve, zeroed each rocker nut then added another half turn took so long for him to figure it out the cam was screwed. He kept running the engine. The lifter has to be on the base circle of the cam when adjustment is made. If the valve lash is adjusted with the lifter on the ramp or lobe it will make a lot of noise. Would be interested in hearing how this got fixed.
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