well as some of you may know i was experiencing a ticking noise for the past couple months. at first it was just annoying, but no loss in power and the car ran fine. as the months went on the power was steadily dropping, and the noise just really started to annoy me. i changed everything short of tearing the motor down...exhaust gaskets, manifold gaskets, wholebunch of other stuff...

after changing everything i figured the problem was in the valvetrain. so i figured putting another motor in it would be the easiest and cheapest fix.

so i bought another motor and have been putting it in this past week (motor #3 in this car ) luckily the junkyard down the street from me has 26 Vq30de's in storage and they sell them to me for $300. and its only a couple days labor for me.

once i got my old one out (the ticker) i pulled the valve cover off the front and discovered this...







forgive me for not knowing the exact name of that part...but it is toast. and the top of it was just laying right under the cam.

so i found my ticking noise, and now i have closure. haha

the nosie started after a hard romp through the end of 3rd gear ~90mph. i guess the valvetrain just couldnt take the abuse from 11psi and 7200rpm.

--Paul

How'd you get the gold plated valve train? Why'd you leave that quarter in there?


Need help putting the other in or did you finish it off yet? I'm available Saturday. BTW: Gayson never did get any....

Whaaaoooo! That took some talent. When I disassembled the heads on the motor I blew 3 years ago it took me forever to get the lifters out. By the way those are the Lifters that opens the valves to the exhaust ports. What you have experience is called floating the valves when the valve spring doesn't have enough time and strenth to close the valve before the cam is opening it again. That happens a lot with Mustangs that have push rod motors, and B series Hondas with no valve train modifications, but I've never seen it on a Max. I wouldn't let it rev that high again.
Choray

Well the gold color was because he change the oil early.

thats what I expected from the first time you posted. Did you ever do a compression test before swapping motors?

glad you found it paul. Stop droping nickles in the engine Are you done with the swap yet?

just a thought but wouldnt it have been ALOT easier to pull the valve cover before you put a new engine in the car and just replaced the lifter and maybe the cam im sure you could have gotten the parts from one of the many other members that have blown VQ laying aroung

I thought you found a nickle in there.

Glad it's finally solved Paul. What are you gonna do to make sure it doesn't happen again? How many miles were on that motor, and how many are on the new one? I got a compression tester if you want to use it....

in theory yes. but i have done a motor swap before on this car and it wasnt too bad.

i just really didnt feel like messing with the valvetrain. pulling the timing chain cover and messing around in there just really doesnt excite me.

Damn Paul, I was wondering why you were selling all your parts. That's good you got it figured out.

How loud was the ticking? Did it get louder as the rpm increased. Its good you were able to figure out what the problem was.
Any interest in parting out the the crank and rods by chance?

jcy...the ticking got a little more high pitched as the rpms went up. and the ticking got faster as the engine revved.

if i ever get the chnce to tear the motor(s) apart i wouldnt have a problem selling anything off of them.

wally -- im not selling all my parts!

looks like a damn nickel got sucked into your valvetrain.

So are you saying stiffer valve springs would reduce the chance of this happening next time? Just curious for my winter project.

that's the valve clearance adjustment shim that goes on top of the lifter bucket. it is supposed to come off like that, just not when the motor is running. you are lucky it landed there and didn't get "into" anything. toyotas use that setup in most of thier engines.

sux you discovered that after you changed the motor, you could put it back on the bucket and seen if was ok. oh, well.

Very Interesting. For about 2 years my engine makes that ticking sound also, very distint. When you rev the motor, the tone increases, but at higher rpms, say around 3500-4000, it will go away. The sound is definately noticable during idle.

I would assume this will affect compression? Because, I've ran a compression test on all cyclinders which was around 180-177psi +/- 3psi.

Also would your boost guage be useful as a reference for measuring compression lost?

According to my boost-gauge, I will see 22 inhg in Vacuum during idle. If a compression problem was an issue you should notice it just from the gauge.

I would assume if the needle was at 0 or 5 inhg under idle, then you would have a compresssion issue?

Maybe I'm wrong?

I don't believe the missing lash adjustment shim would cause a compression issue. unless it got "into someting else" so to speak and caused a snowball effect of engine damage.

With what happened in the pix at the top, the worst case senario is a slight loss of power on that cylinder because the excessive valve clearance is causing the cam lobe not to fully open the valve. there it looks like the exhaust valve, so all it may have done is dillute the incoming intake charge with some leftover exhaust. He's lucky the shim landed where it did and stayed put!

Glad you found the issue....