[steve25]

I wonder if you have a busted valve spring?
I have seen them break at the top and you can't even see it since the retainer covers it and even when viewing the spring moving at idle you can't tell anything is wrong.

[Kenth]

Originally Posted by glhs#116

I was thinking that but I don't have a set. I would basically have to either order a new set of HS or still pay a bunch for the stupid stamped steel "roller tip" deals because of my 7/16" studs.

Anyway, moving the only rocker that seemed at all suspect didn't move or change the noise. Also, the noise is the same with valve covers off and all rockers look / act fine.

I wish it were quieter but it is, "Hey, what's wrong with your car?" loud. Certainly doesn't seem to have changed in a few months of daily commuting with 2750rpm cruise..

Sam

FYI, stock rocker studs are also 7/16 below the 3/8" threads, were the std rocker sits.
Tried another fuel pump?

[Cliff R]

If you haven't tried it already re-adjust the lifters by bottoming them out in the plungers then backing them up 1/4 to 1/2 a turn. Even if you have a lifter that's got major issues internally this will at least reduce any ticking noises to almost nothing.....Cliff

[wbnapier]

Any updates?

[glhs#116]

Originally Posted by wbnapier

Any updates?

Mostly I've been driving the car. It runs pretty sweetly, albeit it must be quite detuned with the spark advance so far back. I will probably try Cliff's suggestion of almost bottoming the lifters when I next have time for that. It really makes the most sense for it to be lifters but kind of weird that the sound seems so much near the front of oil pan / balancer area. Also doesn't explain the noise persisting through several cams and sets of lifters.. Of course nothing down at the bottom front of the engine should be cam speed except for something in the rotating assembly that made noise only on firing. But, then pulling spark plug leads didn't change it..

Now that the weather is cooler and I'm driving with the windows up more I'm hearing different aspects of the noise. I'm almost sure that it goes away completely at just a little past 1500rpm. Anyway, any updates I will share..

Sam

[steve25]

Thanks, and keep at it!

[bluebandit]

Mechanical or electric fuel pump?

[glhs#116]

So, I tight lashed all the valves. Instead of 3/4 turns from loose they are now a little under 1 turn up from bottomed out. It didn't make a scrap of difference. This noise is clearly not lifter related. I'm not super-surprised to learn that since it has remained despite multiple cam swaps.

However, now that the cooler weather is here (Qatar winter is like a nice summer somewhere sane) I've been driving with the windows up more. This gave me a different perspective on the noise. It's really clear to me now that the noise goes away with RPM and becomes completely gone by about 1500rpm. It's so sensitive to RPM that it's "giving you a headache" loud idling in gear but "almost could ignore it" loud idling in neutral. We're talking a few hundred RPM difference here. For one crazy minute I thought it was the PCV valve in the valley because it pulses about the same frequency. But blocking off the vacuum to that doesn't really change the noise. Plus I still say it sounds lower down. But again, fuel pump and eccentric have also both been replaced..

Ah well. It's running great. It really is. Just sounds like a piece of junk when it is at idle or moving slowly in traffic.

Sam

[steve25]

Can you nail it down to either side of the motor Sam.

How about you do a very strange , but quick test and I will tell you why I ask this when you report back with the results.
Try this Crank up the idle speed to like 1300 rpm, shut the motor down and then pull all the 4 plug wires off on each bank (one bank at a time or course ) then restart the motor for enough time to listen for any change in the noise issue.

Do this test on both banks .

Your comment on the noise being loud at idle has me wondering about something!

[Greg Reid]

I have not read every single post in this thread.. but I check it from time to time just out of curiosity to see if it's been solved... so you may have already covered what I'm about to post.
Having said that, I thought about this thread recently when my own 'tick' caused me grief for several weeks before I found what it was.
I could not pinpoint where the tick was coming from except that it was definitely near the front of the engine and was worse at idle than when I throttled up about 1500 or so. This wasn't a little tick..it was very obvious...scary obvious.
Stethoscope could not pinpoint it to any specific area. Almost like the sound was 'projected' into the air near the front of the engine. Like a ventriloquist..
I then noticed that the sound was much less obvious if I removed both accessory belts..in fact, it was pretty much gone...but it did not matter which one I put back, it got worse with a belt on and MUCH worse with both on...so it wasn't the ps pump or alternator.
Changed the water pump. No change. Removed the fan. No change.
Finally, I noticed that it was much more obvious if I lay down in front of the car. The sound was coming from down low. Timing chain? Fuel pump?...but why would the belts make any difference?
I grabbed and shook the crank pulley and it was solid...but while down there, I noticed that one of the 4 crank pulley bolts was missing in action... I reached up and another was loose.
Yep...found it. Replaced the missing bolt and tightened all with blue loctite. No more 'tick'...
Just a thought...

[glhs#116]

Originally Posted by Greg Reid

I have not read every single post in this thread.. but I check it from time to time just out of curiosity to see if it's been solved... so you may have already covered what I'm about to post.
Having said that, I thought about this thread recently when my own 'tick' caused me grief for several weeks before I found what it was.
I could not pinpoint where the tick was coming from except that it was definitely near the front of the engine and was worse at idle than when I throttled up about 1500 or so. This wasn't a little tick..it was very obvious...scary obvious.
Stethoscope could not pinpoint it to any specific area. Almost like the sound was 'projected' into the air near the front of the engine. Like a ventriloquist..
I then noticed that the sound was much less obvious if I removed both accessory belts..in fact, it was pretty much gone...but it did not matter which one I put back, it got worse with a belt on and MUCH worse with both on...so it wasn't the ps pump or alternator.
Changed the water pump. No change. Removed the fan. No change.
Finally, I noticed that it was much more obvious if I lay down in front of the car. The sound was coming from down low. Timing chain? Fuel pump?...but why would the belts make any difference?
I grabbed and shook the crank pulley and it was solid...but while down there, I noticed that one of the 4 crank pulley bolts was missing in action... I reached up and another was loose.
Yep...found it. Replaced the missing bolt and tightened all with blue loctite. No more 'tick'...
Just a thought...

I was getting more and more excited the more your symptoms matched. Unfortunately, though, my front pulley has been on and off numerous times. It’s tight, the bolts are there, the reinforcement ring is there and I get the noise with no belts on also. Interesting.

Sam

[Greg Reid]

Yeah, I thought that at some point, very early in your process, that you had done some major engine work that would have required r&r of the pulleys. That's why I never posted this before....but I wasn't positive without going through the entire thread again.

[dataway]

Does the rpm range at which the tick comes and goes change with cold engine or hot engine?
If it doesn't change ... I'd imagine you could rule out anything oil supply related as I would imagine the change in viscosity would alter the oil supply/volume enough to make the tick change it's end point.

[glhs#116]

No. Oil is definitely involved. There is no tick cold.

Sam

[glhs#116]

Originally Posted by steve25

Can you nail it down to either side of the motor Sam.

How about you do a very strange , but quick test and I will tell you why I ask this when you report back with the results.
Try this Crank up the idle speed to like 1300 rpm, shut the motor down and then pull all the 4 plug wires off on each bank (one bank at a time or course ) then restart the motor for enough time to listen for any change in the noise issue.

Do this test on both banks .

Your comment on the noise being loud at idle has me wondering about something!

Steve,

OK. I'm game. I did this. Interesting. I think on top of everything I am hearing the spark plug leads which are loose arcing to the nearest metal. So there's that extra noise on whichever side has the leads disconnected. But once you remove that, the tick itself remains the same whichever side is deactivated.

Sam

[steve25]

Ok I just wanted to confirm 2 things, 1) that it was not a cracked Exh Manifold opening up more when things got up to temp, and 2 that you did not have the issue a buddy of mine who is a truck machanic had 5 years ago.

He had a issue like yours driving him and every other guy in the shop nuts and they eventually found that a open end wrench had fell way down into the motors left side Manifold before they bolted it up and no one noticed it.
It rattled around like mad as cylinders in that bank fired yet was too big to get out by going thru the port union area of the Exh Manifold!

[dataway]

Originally Posted by glhs#116

No. Oil is definitely involved. There is no tick cold.

Sam

My next move would be increasing oil viscosity to something substantially thicker than you have in it now. See how that effects the RPM at which the tick disappears ... my guess is that it would disappear at a lower rpm.

If the tick rpm doesn't change with thicker oil ... then I'd lean more towards a heat induced increase/decrease in clearance somewhere.

Obviously the point of this being that as oil thins it doesn't cushion high clearance areas as well at a given rpm. As engine temp goes up, oil gets thinner, some areas of high clearance will get noisier. And as rpm goes up, oil pressure goes up and cushions high clearance areas and the sound goes away.

Might help you determine if it's strictly an oil/clearance issue or an issue of a mechanical nature that heat expansion helps cure.

(Also just occurs to me ... if the tick gets WORSE with thicker oil when cold, or remain until a higher rpm .... that might indicate a problem on the suction side of the oil system, or a restriction in the output side, since the thicker oil does not flow as well) Either way .... another bit of data in your collection for the price of an oil change.

Just a theory ... but since it's still kind of a mystery, anything you can do to narrow down the scope of your search might help.

[ponjohn]

Originally Posted by Cliff R

If you haven't tried it already re-adjust the lifters by bottoming them out in the plungers then backing them up 1/4 to 1/2 a turn. Even if you have a lifter that's got major issues internally this will at least reduce any ticking noises to almost nothing.....Cliff

Cliff does this method effect push rod length?

[Cliff R]

Depends on how the geometry was established in the first place. If the lifters are relatively short travel no, if they are long travel and you measured pushrod length with the plungers up near the retainers then 1/4 to 1/2 turn pre-load, yes. Some lifter plungers have a lot of travel from the retainer to being bottomed out (over .100"), others do not.

When I use any type of hydraulic lifter here I compute pushrod length with the plungers bottomed out vs trying to "rig" up some way to shim them up. Of course the results will be a little longer than what is needed, so I typically go to the next shortest length available.

For example, if I end up with 8.200" with the plungers bottomed out, I know I'll need 8.150" pushrods to establish the same geometry once adjustments are made to get the plungers closer to the center of their travel. IF I were using long travel lifter and setting them 1/4 turn down from zero lash I'd need to subtract another .050" or so to establish correct geometry.

With HR lifters I've used quite a few varieties and have noticed that the plunger has a wide range and you really don't know what you are going to get until they show up, unless you go to a Pontiac specific vendor who recognizes the differences:

https://butlerperformance.com/c-1234...r-lifters.html

Several different lifters listed here. I would go with the shortest travel since I'm running any of them with as little oil under the plungers as I can get away with anyhow. In theory it really shouldn't matter, but in actual use with long travel lifters and not much preload it's pretty easy to get a "ticker" on a cold start till they re-fill, or a ticker on a hot engine if/when the plunder to body clearances are less than ideal.......FWIW.......Cliff

[glhs#116]

I don't think the travel on these lifters is all that long. When I started this exercise the first thing I did was break free all the set screws. Then I backed each one out another three full turns (so I would have plenty of travel on the nuts). After I got all the nuts to where the plunger was just bottomed out I backed each one off one turn of the nut. I then turned the set screw back in to lock them again. For most of these I was turning the set screw back in between two and a half and two and a quarter turns. That tells me that "about one turn up from bottomed" and "about three quarter turns down from loose" are about one turn apart from each other. Put another way, I think my lifters are positioned about 0.05" lower now than before.

On the oil viscosity note, I'm almost tempted to go the other way with thinner oil. It's winter here and I'm taking the car to England. I think the 15W-40 oil plus a can of honey-like STP is a bit thick for cooler temps with my tight stock spec clearances. I was thinking of 10W-30 (still with the STP. Call me superstitions if you like)..

Sam