Fresh engine, wiped cam? Tick? (new pics added)

-
myasylum

myasylum

Well-Known Member
Joined
Sep 18, 2008
Messages
1,740
Reaction score
4
Location
Las Vegas, NV
My engine has about 250mi. There is a pretty loud tick on the top end at the #8 cylinder. I have a feeling that the cam is wiped. The exhaust manifold seems fine.

Since this is a pretty fresh engine, my money situation is now nothing, so this sucks. I am thinking about just getting a couple of new lifters and placing them in for the #8 cylinder, and see if that fixes it first. IF it doesn't, my guess is that it would be the cam. Now... If it is the cam I am kind of afraid of metal floating in my oil, but I don't know? Since there is so few miles on it, do you think I can get away with just installing the cam, and new lifters?
I know I SHOULD tear the whole thing apart and check everything. As I say, I'm a poor boy right now.

Am I on the right track? Is this what you would advise doing? I did have a shop quote me $1500.00 to tear it apart, and clean it out and place it together again. He figured since the heavy work is done (like the heads) 250mi ago, that $1500.00 would be about what they would charge. I don't have the room to do the complete engine myself.

I have options here... but what would you do? What could I get away with?

Thanks much!
 
What makes you think its the cam thats bad? if it only has 250 miles on the hole engine?

did you build the engine? do you know for sure that it has 250 miles on it or were you told buy some guy that his 240,000 mile engine only had 250 miles on it? lol

I personally wouldnt say cam unless you seen the cam had bad bearings or something in it and would expect that to be the problem?

the cam would either have to have bad bearings (which would sound more like a light knock rather than a tick) or would have had to wear the lobes off the cam which I doubt either happened in 250 miles unless who ever built the engine did something seriously wrong.

now, $1500 sounds very steep to me (then again i am the kind of person who would tackle the job on my own)......but to change out a cam and lifters is an easy job and could be done in a few hours if you had a buddy that would let you use there garage!.

your looking at the price of a cam/lifter set,gaskets and fluids which could be around a couple hundred $$$ depending on cam choice. and thats based off if you have good cam bearings.....if you have bad cam bearings tack a couple extra hours on to the job unless you have the right tools and know how to use them.

a couple things I would like to know is.....have you retorqued all your bolts since the build? its a good idea to retorque bolts after running for a few miles and cycling from hot to cold (reguardless if that has anything to do with your "tick" ...its a good idea).

adjustable rockers? or bolt down?

The easiest thing to do which will require no money and is fairly quick to do is pop off your valve covers and check and make sure your rocker shaft bolts are tight and then try spinning the pushrods and see if you can get any play in them (sloppy feel)

I dont think you will be looking at a new cam or an engine rebuild or anything like that...most likely something out of adjustment or a blead down lifter that wont pump up...so you may need to invest in a couple lifters.

as for metal in the oil.....its not a MUST to have an engine pulled apart to clean all the nooks and crannys(not a bad idea but not a MUST)
I always run a magnetic drain plug so any debris that may be in the oil clings to the drain plug.

so if anything i would say to drain the oil and inspect it for an shavings or a metallic look to it and then install a magnetic drain plug and do an oil change on it....if you did see slight metallic in the oil you can go ahead and do another oil change which will flush the engine out.

but if you are curious if its a bad cam...a good way to check would be to look at the dip stick and wipe it on a napkin or something and see if you see any metallic in the oil...or drain the oil and look that way......if cam lobes/bearing wore down in 250 miles you WILL see some sort of metallic.
but I doubt it

sorry for the long message just trying to mention what I could think of,hope that helps!
 
also if you had bad cam bearings....your oil pressure would most likely be lacking.....and another thing...I know you said it sounded like #8 cylinder but are you sure you dont have a bad timing chain or something?

a good way to pin point the where abouts of a tick/knock is to put a long handled screw driver to your ear (the HANDLE END) LOL and put the other end on various spots of the engine and listen to where it sounds the loudest and most prominent.
 
Well... I was there when the shop rebuild it, so I'm pretty sure it has 250mi :)
They said it was $1500.00 to tear down the whole motor and rebuild it. they said $500.00 to install a new cam.
I did change the oil and there was like a metallic film floating on top. I didn't think metal would float, but maybe small enough particles would. It just looked like a swirl. Kind of cool looking really. At the time I thought maybe it was just from the cam lube or whatever. It was the first oil change. I looked for bigger pieces of metal, and I used a telescoping magnet inside the oil pan to see if it would pick up any larger pieces, and I found nothing. Nothing large in the oil either, just a swirl.
I would think the bearings would be good? Is there a easy way to tell?
I do have bolt down rockers, and I adjusted them to 20ft lbs. When I adjusted the rockers to 20ft lbs, their was no play in the push rods at all. I will look again tomorrow.
How do I test a lifter to see if they are bad? are they just squishy?
Timing chain and everything is new.
Thanks!

Oh, is it ok to use new lifters on a cam with 250mi? I know your not suppose to switch the used ones around. What about new pushrods? Thanks!
 
Mmmm, I'm facing a similar problem, but with a big block. Ticking noise in the same area as you. I will be watching this thread to see what happens. Good luck.
 
I would recheck valve lash. Then pull lifters if it is still ticking. You might pin point with timing light on corresponding cylinder... JMO weather its on the intake or exhaust might be tricky but not impossible. Using the screw driver to locate or get in the general area is a good trick as well.
 
myasylum said:
Well... I was there when the shop rebuild it, so I'm pretty sure it has 250mi :)
They said it was $1500.00 to tear down the whole motor and rebuild it. they said $500.00 to install a new cam.
I did change the oil and there was like a metallic film floating on top. I didn't think metal would float, but maybe small enough particles would. It just looked like a swirl. Kind of cool looking really. At the time I thought maybe it was just from the cam lube or whatever. It was the first oil change. I looked for bigger pieces of metal, and I used a telescoping magnet inside the oil pan to see if it would pick up any larger pieces, and I found nothing. Nothing large in the oil either, just a swirl.
I would think the bearings would be good? Is there a easy way to tell?
I do have bolt down rockers, and I adjusted them to 20ft lbs. When I adjusted the rockers to 20ft lbs, their was no play in the push rods at all. I will look again tomorrow.
How do I test a lifter to see if they are bad? are they just squishy?
Timing chain and everything is new.
Thanks!

Oh, is it ok to use new lifters on a cam with 250mi? I know your not suppose to switch the used ones around. What about new pushrods? Thanks!
Click to expand...

some minor metallic in the oil would be normal for break in on a new engine but its hard saying with out seeing it first hand to know if it was alot or a little.

for a 318 the rocker shaft mounting bolt torque specs are 17ft pounds but 20 ft pounds wouldnt be overly excessive to cause any damage.

if you have a collapsed lifter you will know it...it will tick pretty loud. but to check it manually you will need to pull the valve cover.
if a lifter is collapsed it should drop down a good 1/4 of an inch I think (maybe more maybe less) which means you may be able to grab the pushrod with your fingers and rock it up and down...if you can .....thats no good and you found your problem. you may want to pull the rocker shaft off and manually push the pushrods into the lifters.....they should be hard to push but you should feel a slight squishy feeling to it ....like a high strength spring almost......if you find one that does not give you any squishy feeling,you may have found a bad lifter (either that or a lifter that is just pumped up really good)....best way to tell is to take each one out and inspect it but to do so the intake needs to come off.

as mentioned before checking the valve lash is a good idea.

you can use new lifters on a cam that has miles on it.....its just a good idea not to go swapping parts around that are used that have worn in at a specific location in the engine.....I always put used lifters back in the holes they came from,just like you would always put rod caps back on the rods they came from.

couple questions,were you hard on the engine in the 250 miles that are on it? high revs? anything like that?

and are you running flat tappet lifters? reason I ask it that you may have dished a lifter......which can happen from wear and tear or beating on an engine or running at high rpms.

could be a number of things but I wouldnt go having your engine rebuilt just yet....I would run through the list of things to check and start ruling stuff out.....first things first get them valve covers off and make sure everything looks as it should and inspect torque and lash and things of that nature .....shouldnt take you long to do that....then let us know what you find and I am sure someone will be able to help you get it figured out!
 
Dont try running the engine. Buy an intake gasket and pull the intake and inspect it. The more it's run, the more likely the damage becomes severe if it's losing a lobe. A fresh engine will often have crap in the oil for the first couple oil changes. Especially if you havent changed the oil since the first start... (Which should have been done just after the cam break in procedure) If there is any chance of the lobe being gone, you must not allow the particles to keep runnning throught the oil system. Pull the intake and take a good long look (or post pics). I don't think adjusting the preload or lash and then running it is wise if you think there's a problem. It's like trying to sprint to see if the sprained ankle will affect you. All you're gonna do is hurt more.
 
if i remember you had an issue of sorts when you first ran the motor, i remember you posting concerns about using the wrong oil or something??
 
ok! but?? How do you check lash?:toothy3:

I've been pretty nice to the engine, i maybe had it up to about 3500rpm.
i've put it about half way down and squawked the tires abit. Thats about all.
 
Make sure you contact the shop that built the engine. Did they offer any kind of warranty on their work? If so, any warranty might be voided if you do the work.
When I built engines for a living, and someone had an issue, (which happened only once - it was a BBC), any warranty or guarantee was voided if it was obvious the owner worked on the engine before bringing it to the shop. In the case above, the owner brought the car back saying there was a bad miss. When I pulled the p/s valve cover, I could tell the owner had removed it at least once. He had tried adjusting the valves and backed one rocker way off and put the valve cover back on. It then bent a pushrod when he fired it up. He tried blaming me but once I pointed out how I knew he had worked on the engine, he shut up and paid for my re-work.
The manifold has to come off so you can look inside the engine. If you think you're wiping the cam and/or lifters, just dropping in new lifters is wasting your money and time and prolonging the engine damage.
The noise might be something as simple as a rocker hitting the baffle in the valve cover. Good luck.
 
i agree. pull the intake you should be able to see if the cam is gone or not. just sticking a new lifter in will only tear up another lifter. sorry but if the cam is gone you really should pull the motor apart and clean all the metal out of it. if ya don't you have a very good chance of hurting something that will cost ya even more money.
 
Time spent checking and diagnosing = money saved on unnecessary repairs.
Beg, buy or borrow a dial indicator and measure the lift on the ends of the rockers. You can start with just the valve cover off and find if the lift varies from cylinder to cylinder. If a lifter has collapsed, or a lobe is wiped out,, you will have substantially less lift on that lobe. To determine if it is the cam or the lifter, you will need to pull the intake or obtain an extension for the dial indicator to allow you to measure lift either right on the lobe, or on the lifter with the rockers removed (eliminating the load from the valve springs). If you pull the intake, a good engine shop should have a lifter leak-down tester to check for a collapsed lifter (or check with your local tech college if they have an automotive program).
If you suspect metal contamination in the oil, get it analyzed. Again - the money spent on the analysis could be far cheaper than the tear-down you are talking about. A magnetic drain plug is a good idea, but not all metals in the engine are ferromagnetic, so it is not guaranteed to remove all potentially damaging material. The oil analysis will give you a VERY accurate idea of exactly what that "sheen" in your oil is.

Lastly, if the problem turns out to be a collapsed lifter (NOT a worn or dished one as mentioned earlier), I would have no reservations about putting a new lifter against a cam with only 250 miles on it.

If your cam is worn, then before you install a new one check the cam bearing oil feed holes. If the machine shop that installed them did not line them up right, it may have been the root cause of your whole problem.

Good luck - and my best advice is make sure you fix the problem - not just the symptoms...
 
I wouldn't mean that I'd just throw new lifters in with a bad cam. I just meant that if I found that it was just the lifters that were the problem, I'd just put in new lifters.

I'd not real keen on going back to the shop that did my engine, long story. They are pretty expensive.

As far as the "lash" I just have stock rockers, so I just tighten the whole bar at 20ft lbs.
I didn't realize there was a lash to be had. The shop that built it didn't check the lash either.

I hope to be pulling at least the valve cover today. I'll try to post pics.

Thanks guys!
 
From what I'm reading....you're runnin a hyd flat tappet cam w/factory bolt down non-adjustable shaft rockers....

your cam is ground on a slight angle... it provides a progressive twist, so to speak, in relation to the lifter

as the lifter comes off the base circle the cam lobe is not only lifting the lifter, it is rotating it

pull your valve cover and have someone start it so you can inspect the pushrods for rotation. you can bring the rpm up a little bit and see if they start turning...if they are not at idle.

if the pushrods will not rotate and they are not bent, your cam is shot. if they are bent they will not rotate and will wear the cam out over time...if it lives that long. to check the pushrods you can roll the engine over to the base circle of any cylinder you want to check and just twist the pushrod...it should be perfectly strait
 
Your getting a lot of grate advice and you probably should go back and re read some of it......If you don't get it figured out.

This is were you need to start.


#1 valve cover has to come off to isolate noise.

#2 if noise is valve train related........#3

#3 intake must removed to determine if lifter preload is to deep.....not deep enough, and if cam lobe, is damaged.....

Once you have determined failure.....then you can fix, and find out why(?) it happened. So it don't happen AGAIN!
 
So far... Pulled the valve cover off, everything seems nicely lubed, so I know oil is getting up there. Some of the push rods I can turn by hand, some are tight.
Just a friendly up date :)
 
myasylum said:
So far... Pulled the valve cover off, everything seems nicely lubed, so I know oil is getting up there. Some of the push rods I can turn by hand, some are tight.
Just a friendly up date :)
Click to expand...

thats normal...to check pushrod straightness and preload you have to rotate the engine to get the lifter on the base circle of the cam

the simplest way to do this is:

watch the rockers on a cylinder (pick one,start at one end of the head and work to the other end) as they open and close the valves

when the intake just opens, stop and check the exhaust
when the exhaust closes, stop and check the intake

you should be able to rotate the pushrod and see that it is strait, even a little bit bent is too much...if the preload is too tight you will most likely feel it, but that is subjective. each pushrod should be "snug" but not "tight"


If those check good, fire it up and watch them, use a flashlight....if they are not rotating as the rockers move the valves, your cam is probably shot
 
Man?? How do you get that intake off of there? It's cemented on! It's a aluminum intake too, so I have to try to be careful!

I did sneak one lifter out of the head for the #8 cylinder. It looked real good, but as far as any "squish" what so ever, there seems to be none. It don't move at all, real tight. someone mentioned about that there should be some squish.

"they should be hard to push but you should feel a slight squishy feeling to it ....like a high strength spring almost......if you find one that does not give you any squishy feeling,you may have found a bad lifter (either that or a lifter that is just pumped up really good)"
 
the lifter is hyd...it may feel solid becuse there is oil in it, oil does not compress. Your valves have many pounds of pressure on them, at least 90 with the valve closed.

you are already pulling the intake?
have you checked your pushrods for straitness like I said?
did you check to see if they were rotating when it was running?
 
Sorry, but I did not. I didn't get your message until I already started tearing everything apart. There is a lot of good advice, yet a lot of the advice is different from other people that seem to get the same result. I was also told not to start it at all in fear that it would just get worse.

At any rate... This is what I have. I was told if the cam was wiped it would be obvious. I guess, I'm just too stupid to tell? :sign10: It does look oddly worn, but it also just looks "used" worn to me!?!? I have posted a lot of pics so I can leave it up to you experts. I am really unsure. The lifters do spin, because you can see the wear marks. I rolled the push rods on a flat table and they seemed fine as well. I do have new Comp push rods I can use when I put it back together just in case. These push rods are from a stock 1971 360. It was rebuilt once, but who knows when.
The lifters have oil on them. I know it looks like burn marks, but it's just oil.
If I shake the lifters I can get them to rattle. They do squish in with just a tap of the finger, about a 1/4" and oil comes out of the hole. All I have to do is shake it and the lifter moves back out. They are flat as well.

IF the cam looks o.k. and I have it this far apart, do you think it might be wise to take off the head, and look at the valves? I have two shops listen to it already, and they both said it was upper valvetrain noise, they used a mechanics stethoscope and they even had a hard time pinpointing the exact problem.

Thanks a lot guys!! PLEASE ADVISE?!?!

DSC01442.jpg


DSC01443.jpg


DSC01444.jpg


DSC01445.jpg


DSC01446.jpg


DSC01447.jpg


DSC01450.jpg


DSC01451.jpg


DSC01454.jpg


DSC01456.jpg
 
im yet to read the post you just made.....but I skipped ahead to the pictures and the cam looked "ok" at first and then I started noticing the odd wear pattern also....hard telling by the pictures....do you have any clearer pictures?.

I dont like that the valley or your engine looks like oil coated rust? they could have did a better job at prepping the block prior to a build.

im thinking maybe lifters and cam though
 
hard saying by looking at them pictures.....but I am thinking MAYBE lifters are bad? they shouldnt squish in a 1/4 of an inch by a touch of the finger.....they should require alot of downforce to squish them in if the are correctly holding there oil.

normally if I had a lefter that has blead down i will toss it in a bucket of oil and pump it up and down a few times to see if I can bring it back to life...but being that yours are fresh out of the engine I would think they should all still be pumped up.

do you have any pictures of the top side of the lifters?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
-

Back
Top