Hi all, well I had a lovely quiet running engine before I stripped it down to fit a new head gasket, while stripped I took the valve lifters apart and cleaned them in petrol re assembled them and primed them air expelled before re fitting to engine, started up and it now rattles badly, what’s gone wrong. Any replies appreciated.
Hydraulic lifter need oil in them
I would not have messed with them personally
have you ran the engine for a while as they should fill themselves back up it may take a while as the oil fill holes are small
thanks for reply, I refilled them and pumped the air out in an oil bath before refitting them so they were full the only problem was I could not start the engine after re-fit for a week so wondering if the oil has drained out, theoretically the oil shouldn’t drain out and I am now wondering if they need replacing.
I am no expert, and never been there and done that, but if you are certain it is the lifters rattling, I would be tempted to run it and see if it gets better on its own. Maybe pop in some 0w30 to help with cold flow.
Obviously being aware of potential to damage something designed to be cushioned by running them dry.
Only other option is stripping and priming - but before doing that I would like to understand what went wrong first time, to avoid repeating the same scenario.
But could it be something else? A bearing on a belt? A cracked heat shield? Something not torqued, or a broken bolt?
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Are you sure there’s an oil supply to the head?
Not with this engine specifically, but I have seen head gaskets with the oil hole/s non existent or missing, (maybe for a different but similar engine) and even gaskets fitted the wrong way round, blocking the oil feed passage.
The lifters should stop rattling after a couple of minutes running max, particularly as it sounds like they were primed correctly.
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Sure you did, but just checking you put them back in exactly the same place they came out of? They WILL wear differently so hopefully that’s what you did.
They should stop the rattle more or less straight away with the oil pressure/feed.
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All new belts fitted, when stripped for the second time there appeared to be plenty of oil in the head, the head gasket can only go one way and everything torqued to the Haynes manual, lifters were put back in the same place as taken out, the head had 10 thou taken off it is it possible that if I had over filled the lifters then the valves would be pressed down more hitting the pistons as I’ve noticed the engine seems to shake more as well.
Cam timing?
Hi, cam timing, I was meticulous with this but the odd thing is I could get the exhaust spot on with the crank markings but the inlet marker was either half a notch high or half a notch low could not got it spot on, undid the marker plate and although the is slight movement still couldn’t achieve the optimum.
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Hopefully someone with more experience of this engine will chime in and it maybe normal, however 1/2 a tooth out is 1/2 a tooth out, and whenever I’ve changed belts and chains on engine’s that don’t have adjustable timing wheels the marks have lined up perfectly.
Clutching at straws a bit but are the cam pulleys identified in/ex and could they have been transposed?
Many thanks for your input when I stripped the engine down I was very careful as to how I laid all the parts out in order, on reassemble I checked the position of the cam wheels on the Haynes manual, but I think your right half a tooth is half a tooth, I think I will take the cam cover off again and see if I can find out what the position of the first cam lodes should be in relation to each other and to the position of the cam wheels.
Are you 100% sure on this? I seem to remember that the head gasket could be fitted upside down or something and this meant that the oil way to the head would be blocked. There is an oval hole that is biased in a certain direction. Have you got your old head gasket to prove or disprove this?
Did you remove the pulleys from the cams as they can be fitted incorrectly.
Im basing this on the assumption its a mk1 1.8 car?
Ah funnily enough when I bought the head gasket I asked the seller which way up it went he said it will only go on one way he was correct, when I came to fit it it was obvious because of the oil ways.
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It’s a mk1 1.6 eunos, yes I did remove the pulleys but what I did was put cable ties on the cam and the pulley the same colour but I think this is the area I need to investigate further,
Cool, so you were aware of the oil way then. I doubt that piston to valve contact would occur unless the valve timing was seriously out.
MK1 engines with noisy lifters following a head rebuild was quite common in my experience (to be fair mx6 mx3 323 and 626 did the same) and no end of revving would ever shut them up, but a steady drive would within minutes sort it all out.
Sometimes they went silent just driving out of the workshop to the forecourt.
If you had not said your engine was shaking that would be my advice but checking your cam timings first like you say would be a good idea.
Thanks for that, the engine shake isn’t that bad but before the strip it didn’t shake at all, I can’t drive it at the moment as I have all the front off, wings bumper etc and all the suspension stripped, I’m still going to do a partial engine strip to check, just a thought the timing belt didn’t have an arrow on it for direction and another thing I did mark the cam position sensor and put that back where it was but would it need retiming, it can’t be that far out as the engine started first crank.
Just another observation the car at the moment is on an angle front end up back end down could that cause an initial oil starvation to the front lifters.
Regarding oil, if the head was dry when installed and there is now oil standing below the cams and around the lifters, then there is oil coming up to the head.
Lifters can take quite a while to fill from empty. I’ve found that you can run a fresh engine build for quite some time with plenty of ticking. Then come back and start the engine a few more times and eventually the tick goes away.