Hey everyone,
Well it looks like my little LO3 is about to bite the dust. There's a really loud ticking somewhere in the passenger bank around the #2 Cylinder. I pulled the valve cover today, checked all the pushrods, straight. Nothing looks out of order. Swapped rockers around, no luck. Re-lashed perfectly, still ticks.

Sooooo my ideas are:
1) Bad Lifter (looked OK through the oil hole, not much you can see though)
2) Wiped cam/cam bearing

Or on the other side of things
1) Bent valve

I'm going to pull the plug on that cylinder to see if there's any metal in there or if the plug's bad. Any ideas? I'm going to give it to a shop and tell them if it involves pulling the cam and or pulling the head, I'm just going to drive around on it till it gives, which sucks, because I really wanted to spray this motor really bad to get a 12 second run out of it, but oh well. Stay tuned, this could get expensive...

Tony

 

Like I've said before, if you need an extra set of hands I'd be MORE than happy to help ya out. I've been dying to do some wrenching, and ironically my car is running better than ever. I'm only about 5 minutes from ya....

Hope you get this figured out! I wanna see that LO3 run 12's myself!

Bruce (90RS305)

 

what exactly does the ticking sound like, a exaust leak can seem like a valve noise (i have taken my valve train apart several times, to end up finding the noise being an exaust leak)

if you fire it up with the cover off on that bank, are you getting oil from all the pushrods? with a roller motor, chances of a wiped lobe, ect are slim to none. i would first try a new header gasket, and retorque the headers.

 

I agree. Header flange leaks are very common when you use sub par gaskets. I would replace those with some better ones and re tighten them down. Your last header bolt on the passenger side flange could have worked its way out and you would have a tough time getting your ear down that far to hear a tick.

 

out of curiousity whats the torque rating on header bolts?

 

Assuming that it was an exhaust leak, I don't see how one would have gotten there in the first place, especially with only 89K on the clock. I really don't think it is one because it sounds like it's coming from below the intake manifold-ish when I put my ear up to it.

 

I've replaced my exhaust manifold gaskets but I still have to tighten the header bolt near the #8 cylinder once every few months... its a PITA

 

I don't have headers

 

Well, that might explain why your hearing is shot....


................what?.....................

 

Haha, leave it to bruce to catch me on that one Hehe good catch man, what I really meant was, that the stock manifolds are on there, they've never been touched or tampered with.

Tony

 

Hey Tony,

Do you need some help with anything?

 

Just a shoulder to cry on man I'm going to take it to a shop sometime this week to let them have a look at it...basically right now I don't know what I need help with

 

sure hope its just an exhaust leak. and not something as major as an internal engine problem