Lifter Tap?

Alright, odd little sound here. Before I pulled the motor apart, there was a sound that came from the back of the drivers side of the motor. Now, I figured that is was probably a very tiny start to an exhaust leak from the manifold, and when I took everything down, it appeared that there was. Now, everything's back together, car is running. Last night, I put the rest of the factory exhaust on so I wouldn't tick off the neighbors (I was out drivin and it's kinda loud). And now, what I thought was a small exhaust leak through the flexpipe that mates the collectors to the rest of the factory exhaust, turns out not to be. I got that same damn tick coming from the front of the passenger side of the motor. It goes faster with more rpms, and is really annoying.

Now comes the questions. Could this have been part of the cause to my original bowed valvesprings? What causes it? Is there a way around tearing the engine back apart to fix? If not, what lifters can I go with, factory good enough, or crane, etc? And if I have a cam that has a .499 lift w/1.73 rockers, what size pushrods do I need to make a .520 range lift.

The car overall, drives great, really solid. I just don't wanna screw anything up here, and snow will be on the ground soon, so the car will be garaged anyway. Any feedback is much appreciated.

Thanks, Alyn

TTT

C'mon, someone out here knows the info I need. Pllllleaaaaasseee! I wanna get started on fixin this right away.

Longer push rods are not going to increase the valve lift without holding the valve open when it's supposed to be closed. The only way to do that is with a higher lifting cam or a higher ratio rocker.

The ticking noise your hearing is probably from a rocker being slightly looser than it should be. With non adjustable rockers, this can be fixed by using longer pushrods and shimming each rocker to obtain the correct preload.

The more agressive your cam is, the more likely you are to get some valvetrain ticking, especially on a cold engine. I think the stock lifters are fine.

David

When you reassembled the valvetrain, what steps did you follow to install the rocker arms? - correct torque procedure and preload are fairly important to getting a nice quiet valvetrain.

Did all the correct procedures for putting everything back together. I Used the ford guide and followed everything to the T. Normally, I would ignore it, like I did before, but it seems a little more noticable now since everything is back together. If I can, I will try to put a sound clip up of the noise. I didn't need shims for the rocker arms either. everything checked out perfect. The reason I think that a lifter is making the noise is because everything came out, and was put in a box, and everything went back in with no particular order. So it is possible that the lifter from one side of the engine is now on the other side making the noise. Being there were two bowed springs when they took apart my heads, I feel it may have had something to do with the noises I heard before as well.

As for the pushrod issue, I thought since I will have everything apart, I could change them up wile changing the lifters. I originally wanted to use the 1.8 ratio rocker arms, but only had money for the 1.7's at the time everything was going back together. I talked to someone on morana's tech line about the rocker arm issue for about a 1/2 hr., and he said the 1.8's would yeild what i wanted. I gave him the specs for the cam, and he said that the 1.8's would work fine.

i have the same exact noise. mine is also coming from the rear drivers side. gets louder with time. i took everything apart when i first heard the noise and one of my rocker arms was loose(i also have the non-adjustable type). i rechecked all of the rockers to make sure they were torqued right and put it back together. when i started my car back up the noise was still there just a lot more quiet. i left it like that and drove it for a while and the noise gradually got louder. i took it apart again and inspected everything and nothing was wrong. all the rockers were torqued right and everything seemed in good condition. im not quite sure what it is either. maybe a bad lifter.

Thank you proving I'm not crazy. Mine originally came from the same area. Only now, its in the front pass side of the motor. Did you ever try replacing any of the lifters? Once snow hits, i'll be tearing into it again.