Hi all

Wonder if you can help with a rather frustrating noise.
I've recently completed the top end of my mopar 440 (fitted to a Jensen interceptor) and I get a reasonably loud ticking noise (I'm assuming tappet) for about 5 or 6 seconds only when starting after leaving the car overnight. I think it is only coming from one side and perhaps towards the front of the rocker covers. Once it goes the engine sounds great and I can start it all day and there is no noise. I only get it briefly on initial startup after the car has been left overnight.

As part of the rebuild the engine has new edelbrock ally e-street heads, edelbrock performer cam and lifters, pushrods comp cams roller rockers. It set the lifter pre-load to ¾ turn initially and tried reducing to ½ turn but this didn't make any difference.


The cam break in went well, the tappets were noisily for the first minute or two but were then quiet.

Oil wise, I'm running Lucas classic car oil 20/50 and a Fram filter.

Any thoughts on what I should do here. Do I just live it as a feature, try messing about with the pre-load or perhaps try different oils / filters.

Thanks for any advice,

Alex

 

Alex -

Old school trick was to add a little Marvel Mystery Oil or tranny fluid to the regular oil.
Also 20/50 might be a little too thick, thus taking too much time to reach the top of the engine from a cold start.

If that doesn't work, it's a search and destroy to find the bad lifter.

Archer

 

What type of oil filter do you have on it? I know it's a Fram but there ar different quality levels of fram. I put a Wix premium filter on it.

 

There is a problem with new hydraulic lifters, the lifter manufacturers are using China parts inside the US made bodys, sloppy tolerance for all the parts makes noisy lifters. This has been going on for a couple of years.

 

I would most likely say you got a set of the bad lifters.... If the engine has good oil pressure. Most of the time you will find the lifters are defective.. (Plan and simple, sounds like the lifter is bleeding down over night is the problem)

 

The off shore parts is becoming a problem, a trustworthy machinist on the you tube researched this because he had engines coming back. Three months and many rumours came down to hard faced lifters from only Comp Cams and Howard’s.