ticking noise? Timing Iasue?
- Thread starter rogus
- Start date
Have you removed all the belts to eliminate noise coming from any pulleys, or the fan. Also unbolt torque converter from the flex plate and push it back towards trans for clearance; assuming it's an auto.
Are the valve covers the same as when it was run out of car? Maybe roller style rockers are hitting inside of covers, and they need to be taller.
Get a long screwdriver or actual engine stethoscope see if you can determine if the noise is top of engine, left or right valve cover, front timing cover or from bottom or in oil pan area.
Use a cylinder balance analyzer (kinda old school, analog tach/dwell meter style, Craftsman had one back in the day) and see if killing one cylinder at a time changes or isolates the noise to a particular cylinder(s).
If you don't have one, you can use test light and some short pieces of vacuum line between spark plug wires and cap to kill spark. Some guys like to poke holes in the boots on the distributor cap but I don't like doing that.
Are the valve covers the same as when it was run out of car? Maybe roller style rockers are hitting inside of covers, and they need to be taller.
Get a long screwdriver or actual engine stethoscope see if you can determine if the noise is top of engine, left or right valve cover, front timing cover or from bottom or in oil pan area.
Use a cylinder balance analyzer (kinda old school, analog tach/dwell meter style, Craftsman had one back in the day) and see if killing one cylinder at a time changes or isolates the noise to a particular cylinder(s).
If you don't have one, you can use test light and some short pieces of vacuum line between spark plug wires and cap to kill spark. Some guys like to poke holes in the boots on the distributor cap but I don't like doing that.
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I have removed the belts. the noise seems to be coming from near cylinder 8 using the screwdriver method. I have pulled the number 8 spark plug and inserted a metal rod with a magnetic end on it trying to see if something had somehow gotten into that cylinder. I rotated the engine a little bit at a time while using the magnetic pickup but didn't find anything there. The valve covers are listed as being "Tall" covers but I will pull the valve cover from that side tomorrow hopefully if it doesn't rain.
That sounds gnarly. I'm thinking that it just might be a rocker arm rubbing on the valve cover, possibly the baffle. I had that issue with some tall Edelbrock Signature Series covers once.
I would definitely check the rockers to make sure they're all properly tight and not banging into anything in the valve cover.
Apreciate the response. I'll be pulling the valve covers soon.
You can get a USB smartphone borescope that you can use with your phone to look inside any cylinder, or through intake/exhaust port to see if anything is bent, broken, etc.. Some are small enough to go through the dipstick hole, or if you pull the distributor through that hole to get a look inside the oil pan, or better drain the oil and go through the drain plug hole to have a look around.
If you do pull the distributor, maybe get a Oil Pump primer tool in there to spin the oil pump and make sure there's no noise, or issues when you do that. #8 cylinder is in the rear of the engine so that's in the vicinity of the oil pump, and distributor drive.
Thanks. I didn'tknow that. Will check it out.
one of the number 8 pison rockers was hitting against the baffle in the valve cover.
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