Hi Everyone,

I'm looking at a 66 Mustang with a 289 in it. The guy says one of the lifter taps when it is first cranked up but goes away once it is warmed up. What is involved in fixing this? Should I just replace all of the lifters at one time? Is this common for something to happen? This guy bought the car and restored it although he did not fix this. So he does not have much history on the car.

I've also heard that an exhaust leak at the manifold can confuse you for this. But its not consistent so it must be the valve lifter. I had the bolts come loose on my 77 Corvette and it sounded like the valves at first.

I'm still looking for a mustang to trade for my 77 vette and hate to get one that needs something done to it like this but if its nothing major, I can deal with it.

Pictures of my corvette incase anyone has a nice coupe or other they want to trade for it! http://www.pack26.com/corvette/

Thanks,

Warren

 

Tapping lifters is very common. You would need to replace the lifters and the cam so stop the tapping, not a real hard job just kind of a pain in the ***.

 

Does the cam shaft really have to be replaced too??

 

Yes if you replace the lifters the cam has to be replaced. Depending on how extreme you want to go on the cam though Comp cams has flat tappet kits with varying cam specs for 100-150 dollars so its not expensive, just a tiny bit time consuming.

 

Yes.

Flat tappet lifter faces and the cam lobes "wear into" each other on a microscopic level during break in. Once you've done that, each lifter and its specific lobe becoma a matched pair and you shouldn't even swap lifters around within the same engine.

Having to replace the cam and lifters also gives you the opportunity to upgrade the valvetrain to a hydraulic roller setup. This is far more tolerant of the oil formulations that are commonly found any more. An HR cam and lifter kit costs more initially - unless (or until) you wipe out a lobe on your new flat tappet cam (and you have to dive into the engine to replace it all again). HR cams can open the valves a little faster than flat tappet cams, so there's a little extra top end power to be had for any given intake duration.


Norm

 

It may not be a serious problem at all:
Try changing the oil to a lighter weight oil like 10W-30, see if the noise goes away.
Mine gives the same lifter noise when cold if I run 15w-50 oil, but runs great on 10W-30.

Now,, if it starts getting blue smoke out the exhaust with the thinner oil,
that thick oil was masking a worn engine problem, probably bad rings.

It could also just be a bent push rod (just replace the rod and leave the lifter alone)
or a rocker that needs adjustment.