bikeboy587

I STILL have a clapping sound in my valve train.

I'll start from the beginning....I did my h/c/i swap with the parts in my sig, and at the same time pulled my motor to do my rear main seals and put new bearing in the bottom of the motor as well as flushed out the block and put a new oil pump on. The oil pressure is very high with the new bearing and new pump, in the top 1/4 of the stock gauge. I put new lifters in with the build because my old ones were ****ed. My heads have Ford Racing 1.6 Roller Rockers on them and I had a valve job done on them. The heads are o-ringed heads too, not that it matters. I am running tall Summit valve covers. the top end of the motor has been apart many times and i am about to say **** it, tune the car and spray it, if it blows it blows. and currently the geometry with the stock pushrods is perfect so don't waste your breath talking about that.

1st- tried to start the motor with incorrect length pushrods, they were too long. 6.400

2nd- tried the stock 6.250 pushrods, they worked but still had clapping valvetrain noise just on the passenger side even though both sides have the same parts.

3rd- tried with valve covers off and lifters taken out and re-primed, noise still there, now on both sides

4th- tried 6.300 pushrods since we thought the stock were too short after talking to Trickflow, but they were too long

5th- tried 6.300 pushrods with .030 shims, noise still on both sides.

6th- tried 6.250 stock pushrods again with a 2nd set of new lifters that I left soak for 3 days. put them in and started it up the noise was only in the passenger side again. drove it around the block and it finally went away!!!!, parked it, started it up the next day to show some ppl and it was quiet. I revved the motor to 1500-2000 and it came back in the passenger side! Wtf. I let the motor warm up, revved the motor some more, nothing, nothing fixed the sound it stayed.

1BIGMOFO

Thats weird man I have never herd of that. Are you sure your not just thinking your hearing it? Sometimes if you focus too hard to hear something you actually think you are hearing it!

bikeboy587

No I am most definatly sure about the noise

wrenchturner75

when you say your old lifters were replaced why? what happened to the old ones, did they collapse, come apart, what, with the engine running and valve covers off do you have oil flowing from all rockers, when you say very high oil pressure how high, please more info.

bikeboy587

More info geez i already wrote a story. The original lifters were so loaded with varnesh that I could not get the apart to clean them. could not come up with any other theory for the noise and i didn't think that they were bad but i thought it was worth a try since i could of damaged them with the wrong length pushrods or by chance got a bad batch.

Oil was flowing to all the rockers with the covers off, i watched the top of each rockers fill with oil (this with the old lifters that had the same passenger side only problem of noise)

I don't have a number on the oil pressure. stock pump was at the letter R on the word NORMAL on the gauge, and now with the new pump and bearings it is between the A and the L

wrenchturner75

i know youve gone through the mill on pushrod length but have you checked for possible rocker to valve retainer contact? sometimes with the incorrect length pushrod the rocker body can actually hit the valve retainer and cause excessive noise, otherwise if your positive on the pushrod length and have no interfearence issues and everything looks good, i say run it, just maybe with the trickflow cam ramp profiles and roller rockers the noise your having may be considered normal. like you said itll either go or blow. hopefully go! im out of answers for ya good luck with the tune

bikeboy587

i don't think there is rocker to valve retainer contact, but if there was, why would it do it on one head and not the other with Identical parts on both....

but thanks for trying to figure it out bro

brentloftis

You have done a lot but are you certain it is valvetrain noise and not a rod bearing? From the original post you mentioned the noise appeared on both sides at one point and went away after soaking the lifters for 3 days.....until high RPMs,I am just speculating but would you be able to record the noise for us to listen?

94StinkinLincoln

have you adjusted the guide plates?
im wondering if that might be part of my ominous problem, along w/ an small exhaust leak somewhere.

im going to pull my valve train apart, well some of it to change my springs so if mine goes away, i will let you know. here are some possibilities, best way to figure it out is to try one thing at a time, test and retest, time consuming but effective, look at the big picture and analyze the situation and do your best.

valve cover contact-ruled out
rocker arm hitting retainer
pushrod agaist something
lifter-ruled out since u replaced them
incorrect pushrod length, take the stock length pushrods to measure what u have right now, go to the side w/ the noise, mark the top of the valve w/ a marker, set lash, turn motor over 2 times and look at the wear pattern (now a "solid" hyd lifter is recomended, i didnt do that and amazingly my length was still correct, but the next go around i will be using a "solid" lifter) figuring in preload and a certian amount of lifter movement plus the wear mark will determine if the pushrod is too long, short, or just right.
i belive you posted how u set lash before, i think it was correct.
cam ramp rates add to the noise
rocker roller/needle bearing
exhaust leak, but sound did move so im not sure on that one.
mine is strange, very lol but after some trial and error and looking at the system as a whole and individually and analyzing it all, both of our problems will get resolved.
and our brains might fry, but thats ok lol
just dont blow it up!

bikeboy587

Well it was not at high rpms, the idle is set at 1000 right now with no tune and i revved it to 1500-2000 area once. i'm positive it is not a rod knock bec it gets quieter as i rev the motor, as oil pressure goes up, and a rod knock would get louder with rpms