Hi. Have problem with the new Lifters. After install they make rattle/tikking noise.
The engine is stock Corvette 2002. Job done by engine mechanic.
Did everything by the book.
checking lifters for any damage.
Cleaned lifters and soaked them in oil before install.
did the right break in procedure. 10min 2550-3000rpm cool down 10min 2500-3000rpm
Drove the car on the road and is was sounding good.
Next Day after changing oil 5w-30 Dexos 1 gen 2 fully syntetic
it started making tricking rattle sounds.
Can new lifters be bad??

I bought these lifters:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/134895639257

 

Just curious, what oil was in the engine when you first fired it up?

I've used Mobil1, the original formula, later on, the "high mileage formulation", in the specified 5W-30 viscosity, since my C-5 was new. Never a lifter tick.....except for one time. I store my car for the winter, and usually start it up a couple of times, over the winter, just to circulate the oil around the engine. After I retired from full time work, I had a part-time job at one of my area's auto parts stores, for a few years. At one point, Castrol was dropping a 0W-40 oil from the line we were stocking, and the store was "closeout sailing" it, really cheap.

I thought the oil might make a good oil for the winter, with the "cold" viscosity rating being "0", so I snagged the oil, and a short time later, put it in the car. Upon startup, immediately after filling up with this oil, the valve train clattered noticeably, unlike before. I gave it a couple of minutes, thinking that as the oil warmed, the viscosity would thicken. Nope, it still clattered. I immediately dumped the Castrol and put 6 quarts of Mobil1 in the car, and all was fine.

Nothing scientific, here, but something to ponder...........

 

Break in?? roller cams and lifter dont have to be broke in. You did old school break procedure with tappet lifter and cam. I Broke in 100s of thoughts old engines. Maybe doing that way damaged them. Just saying. Or you got the infamous bad batch of lifters.

Can new lifters be bad?? Yes

 

i just followed this instruction

https://www.engineprofessional.com/a...Q317_62-66.pdf

 

did you remove LS1 lifters and install LS7 lifter depths because that requires new pushrods. They do no make LS1 lifters any more to my understanding at least not easily obtainable.

Any good mechanic would know they need to measure the correct pushrod length in general.

If you cannot tell me what the lifter pre-load is, and your mechanic can not tell you, then perhaps the issue is pre-load related.

2. Next, are you sure those are actual authentic lifters? Sometimes people on ebay remove the good lifters and put chinese copies back in the box and shrink wrap.
Never buy lifters from ebay. Directly consult contact the manufacturer or supplier name brand.

3. why did the lifters need to be changed? It must have been making noise before or you would not have done this? Perhaps the original problem is still there and just getting worse. Or something like that. We need more information here, Preload, reason for the change, lifter serial number laser etching authentication, whatever anybody else can think of im sure there is more. LS lifters is one of the most mysterious cluster fk things about the LS style engine and its not your fault but there is no room for trust or error in this venture.

Check the oil pressure using mechanical oil gauge on the back, top most behind the intake manifold port at least make sure its like 34psi when hot or whatever

 

im using the same lifters in my c7 with DOD delete and they are way too noisy. ive tried longer pushrods with no change. today i will try a diff oil.

 

I guess im wrong, But millions of car with roller valve trains come off the assembly line, who breaks them in?? the customer or the factory?? Who has time for that. When my wife bought an LS cars we asked is there a break in period. Guy said just don't redline it for a couple hundred miles. Ha ha first thing i did was redline it. Had to feel the the power. Its over 30k miles one. Just saying. Another example is how long have piston ring been gap the same and all of a sudden a company changes what ring land gets the bigger of smaller gap. Another crazy change is the oil passage barbell. Now that is a joke. But the best advertisement is the internet. Remember internet is never wrong. I just rebuild my engine and still have the stock barbell 150k miles on. GM'S is superior never once you heard of the barbell oil failing. Or i never had, but i guess there are a lot failing out there. Don't know. JMHO. But maybe GM has been breaking in like you said and i missed that, so igor me if im wrong. But again if that makes people comfortable that's all that matter. JMHO. Just saying you did something i never heard of, so you threw in a possible reason for the failure or like was siad up above change the oil and all might good to go and then you can yell at me.

 

Its true there is not any 'break in' wear developed by roller lifter. If there was, you could not replace the cam and re-use old lifters.

Also if the break in was done incorrectly, the wrong wear would quickly escalate into metal shaving and trash the engine. Oops time for a new block.

That said there is something about parts getting into a new rhythm of sorts. A part like lifter has to repeat cycle 9999999 times do the exact same thing over and over, so its precise shape and load, metal properties, oil cavity, spring and checkvalve, whatever is inside and outside forces and oil cushioning/films must quickly fall into suitable cycle pattern for the repeating nature of movement not to incur any wear, because even the tiny-est bit of wear during 1 cycle is multiplied by 99999 cycles and the part would quickly fail, long before say 10k or 20k miles nevermind 200k or 300k. It is a big problem with aftermarket internal engine parts of all kinds, that amplified tiny bit of wear due to a slight manufacturing:block organization ratio. Like a connecting rod with a .00012 too tight wrist because nobody measured out of the box and just assumed. Or a main bearing 0.00115 out of round on the ends due to clamping load difference from using studs without an align hone. Or cylinder distortion due to studs without using a deck plate to bore the engine, it gets a slight egg shape and now you've got cyclic cylinder wear that rapidly wears down the engine. "My engine only has 10k miles and so much blow-by" very common.

But a lifter is not generally considered a part that users can take apart, inspect, measure, verify, assemble and install like so many others. And we do not know how human and environmental interactions influence statistics of failures. For example if I touch a lifter roller with human skin contact or outside air, it will have deposited hundred billion molecules of life such as calcium, iron, sulfur, potassium, sodium, carbon, etc.. many of which embed and alter the surface friction and lubricative quality of the part. Oil behaves differently when flowing over a clean metal surface vs one that is deposited with various microscopic debris. I personally opinion believe that part of the reason we see so many lifter failures is people handling them with skin contact and leaving them out in the air too long or in a box exposed to air and dirt. Especially leaving an open engine in the air too long. One day will deposit from the air many countless trillions of debris molecules which now circulate and nucleate/accumulate somewhere in the engine, and lifters happen to have one torturous pathway for oil where alot of debris and carbon nucleation takes place even in a clean engine with normal wear.

Again I would say,
verify oil pressure & check the lifter preloads, do the wiggle compare thing with rockers on and off the valve seat. Inspect the rockers for wear on the tips. feel the rollers for needle bearing smoothness, no crunch. Ensure the running engine dribbles oil down all the rockers and springs at idle the same rate. Loolk through pushrods for clear passage and inspect rocker cups for strange wear, many rockers on LS style engines experience extra wear near the front of the engine to the pushrod cups I've noticed , probably due to cold start oil flow time. You do everything you can from above first and consider changing oil viscosity just as experiment to see if it changes the noise, that is a sign of lifter oil cushion bleed rate due to viscosity influence, it lets you know that indeed the noise could be lifter related at least. If there was any doubt. You can try stethoscope to see one side maybe one lifter is making noise. Get a video of the noise let everyone hear it. Do idle noise and rev noise. I kind of know how they should sound alot of people here are familiar they can help say if its natural noise maybe.
And good luck. Im also planning to change my lifters with 250,000 miles because of a little tapping noise they make. I think. But so many threads like this one have me hesitate for many years. Dont fix what isnt broken. What was broken that you needed to do this job and take this risk? I just wonder.

 

No oil thickens as it warms. IDK where this rumor ever started, but it is a somewhat common misconception. Multi Viscosity oil thins as it warms, just like straight weight oil does. The difference is multi-vis thins at a slower rate than straight weight oil does. If oil thickened as it warmed, EVERY engine manufacturer would recommend you change your oil while the engine is cold, while it is thinner(!), the polar opposite of what they recommend. Also, I agree with Talon that, IMHO, I would NEVER, EVER buy internal engine parts from some unknown ebay seller. Yes, there are good deals to be had, but its like a crap shoot. I prefer buying from reputable, brand name carrying retailers..

 

I think people maybe get confused when they read about polymer chains unfolding with temperature increase which increases 'improves' the viscosity of the oil as temp is going up. The oil gets 'thicker' as the chains unfold with input energy. However the overall viscosity is still lower than it would have been at colder temperature with folded polymer. While oil does not exactly get 'thicker' with input energy it does 'slow its rate' of getting thin by gradually altering conformation of hydrocarbon side chains, if it is a multi-grade viscosity oil and has those folded & intact chains.

So yes oil thins out as it warms but it can thin out more slowly in multi-grade oils because of conformational changes to chemical structure.

Careful though about mentioning oil viscosity on a car forum you will trigger an avalanche of curious observers resulting in 14 pages of discussing about what the number on the bottle means.

 

Agreed, nothing scientific about that statement Motor oil does not thicken as warms.

 

Buddy put those lifters in his engine and measured pushrod length for custom pushrods. They're still pretty loud.

You did say it was good then you changed oil and they are making noise. Change back to the oil that was in it when it was quiet.

 

I think The Lifters i used is genuine Brian Tooley link ebay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/134895639257
Preload is ok (1 and 1/4 turn)
changed the oil to 5w30 Dexos 1. gen.2 (a little better but nothing to write home about)
have ordered trunnions for the rockers to try next (dont think its fixing the noise problem)
Next i was thinking about changing the timing chain and oil pump (melling?) high flow? High pressure? i have no idea and need help
i made a video on youtube. Link below
1: the ticking is less after car is heating up
2: the rattling noise at 45-50 sec in the video does not go away, but a little more quiet if i run at high rpm for 20-30 sec ore more

 

It sounds alot like my 250,000 miles, 22 year old original LM7 lifters currently

Like they are worn out? Old? Did you actually see the lifters go in, or did you hand the brand new box to somebody and trust them to install those lifters and not some used junk out of a different engine while you were not looking

If you are going to remove them anyways, Consider send some to the manufacturer to see if they verify its actually what you bought
send them the video of the noise for diagnosis

 

thanks for the reply

I was there. The mechanic is a friend if mine. Its very strange.... i cant figure out what is going on here

 

I see where your coming from, but its time to bite the bullet . fix it or drive it. Just saying.

 

Man, I hate to say it, and this is MY opinion only, but I would NEVER buy internal engine parts off ebay. Some guys have good luck, some guys don't. Kinda like the old Rod Stewart song about some guys have all the luck. I wish you only the best.....