No... obviously the idle is much different, but the engine sounds fine. Don't you have some equipment I can plug into my car and check my afr? If so, I'd like to try and meet up with you one of these nights (I'm not going to be at Chik-fil-a on fri...) Let me know.

 

Hmm. I watched the guy who installed my cams while he did it. How would I know if he bled the lifters or not? From what I saw he just removed the old cams, put new cams in and then cranked it over. I had slight ticking with the stock cams, but it is really bad now after new cams.

 

I wonder if many of the problems with not bleeding the lifters are coming from cars that didn't have the engine turned over by hand a couple of times (ratchet in the crank pully) before trying to start them?

I just installted a second set of larger cams, and had the first set of larger cams out of the car two or three times without any ticking or problems. The repeated tear-downs were related to problems with some head work, but the cams and lifters always seemed to recover fine. I did spin the cams at least two full rotations slowly by hand before every firing of the engine, though.

 

Yup that was me. The cleaning worked for about 24 hours and then the next morning on the way to work the noise was back. I'm going on timzcat earlier post the the internals of the lifters were damaged on installation of the cams. Although the noise wasn't there right away it took about 2 months for me to notice the noise. It could have been there sooner but during the winter I never had my windows down and the heater was always on so that might have buffered the sound.

Once I get my lazy butt off the couch I am switching over to the 99 dsm style which has a smaller oil port on the top of the lifter and it is slghtly longer, I can take picture of both sitting next to each other if need be.

My own theory was the Mobil1 oil, personally I think it's crap. It seems to watery and not very consistant. I switched to Motul 300v oil and it helped a little bit but the noise is still there and is wreacking havoc with the utec. My tune never knocked until the lifter noise started.

 

Ok, been pretty busy with life and missed all of this...

Tell me this... what keeps a "lifter" from "blowing a seal" going from base circle to max lift every rotation? Does the "lifter" not fill with oil going from peak lift down to base (if not, how would it do it's job)? What keeps this over pressurization from happening on the way back up?

 

boy and i thought you were going to help, you made it worse..haha

 

Because it's really a lash adjuster. Since it is not in between the valve and cam and it only supports the end of the rocker arm. Theory is when they are bled down and the engine is started, the oil pressure will fill the lash adjuster to take out the clearance so the roller is tight against the base circle. When the valve opens the lash adjuster doesn't give in part because the check valve stops oil from being push out of the lash adjuster under piston pressure. As the engine is run the lash adjuster is constantly trying to extend to the base circle because oil pressure is constantly applied to the lash adjuster. The problem lies in the installed piston height under the base circle once it has been pressurized. The piston is somewhere around the middle of the bore. When the lash adjuster is removed, spring pressure in the lash adjuster combined with the existing oil in the lash adjuster extendeds the piston to it full height and to the end of it's bore.
If the lash adjuster is not bled down then a cam with considerably more lift is installed. There are two problems with this, first the cam is being torqued down against this extended lash adjuster. This is not good for the cam caps and I think it has something to do with what dark horse was seeing with the bore misalignment as concerns the cams. The second problem is the lifter do not collapse under pressure so a lash adjuster which is already too far extended is now seeing the pressure of the cam lobe which has considerably more height then the stock lobe. Since the piston is already extended to far and under extra pressure on the base circle then the lift of the cam increases this pressure beyond the point where the seal inside can handle or was designed for. Stiffer valve springs will apply even more pressure on the lash adjuster piston if it is too far extended. Although the increased spring pressure would help with any 'closing side' ramp drop and actually prevent noise.

It's really a one way check valve and like any one way valve, if you apply enough pressure in the closed direction you will blow it out.

 

gee i wonder how close the valves are coming to the piston if the lifters are not bleed. thus creating more lift, like timcat said..

 

Damn.. i think I'll have Buschur install mine after all. Good read guys!

 

I see where you are coming from and here is what I observed. During the cleaning of the lifters some of the rockers felt very loose meaning you could slide them from side to side while the cam profile is pointing away from the rocker. Now when I took out those lifters with the "loose" rocker they felt different when I compressed them to the ones without "loose" rockers. The one with the loose rockers compressed very easily but about mid stroke if felt as it caught some type of lip or burr that was imbedded into the inside of the lifter. Follow me? The lifters with the tight rockers, when I compressed them it felt there was actully pressure pushing back on them then all of a sudden I almost gave myself a money shot with oil. But once all of the oil seemed to be drained from the lifter there was still some resistance trying to compress them, more resistance than the lifters with the loose rockers still filled with oil.

So when the cams went back in in my car, maybe some how the crown of the lifter was cocked ever so slightly and wore into the inside cylinder of the lifter and developed a type of "blow by" of oil to reduce the pressure that the lifter use to make. Once again this is my own theory but sounds logical to me.

 

That's tricky. Because it is a roller rocker the roller centerline really doesn't move therefore the lift is the same. It is creating more pressure on the lash adjuster side of the rocker which applies pressure to the valve. The potential exists with stock springs to prevent a valve from seating fully. But that is a little far fetched. IF stock springs have a seat pressure of say 62 lbs then the pressure being applied is lowering this number as it relates to the pressure of the valve head against the seat. Make sense.

This was in response to dafarmer69, to avoid confusion.

 

Makes sense. But when you are tightening down the cams against fully extended lifters even putting stock cams in would make the lifter tip and the valve tip ever be closer together ever so slightly, now the vavle side of the rocker has room to move but the lifter side doesn't, so wouldnt the rocker pull on the lifter to compress back down?

 

so the final thing this comes down to is if you changing your cams, bleed the lifters.. boy this design is diff from v8's.. sorry i have pushrods in my head.. i know its alot to ask, maybe copy paste from another company, timzcat why dont you do install guide.. for the people who have the tools, that need to do this job the right way.. ill wait to see evo guru under mod statis soon..

 

I don't actually get what you mean.
One of the big problems with the cam install against the full lash adjuster is the excess pressure on the cams and the resultant pulling effect on the bosses of the head. Aluminum is not that strong and this is probably misaligning the cam journal bore and or making the cam caps out of round. The overall effect of this is cam bind.

But back to the point. They really can't get closer because of the design but the rocker goes from a position such as -- to \
Of course that is an exaggeration but the center point of both of those is still the same and this is still where the roller sits so really the rocker ratio is not effected.

I think it's all in the excess pressure that exists after the install. We all know liquid does not compress so something has to give. Therefore the check valve which was never design to handle this type of load gives out.

This brings up an interesting point too. Air should not get trapped in the lash adjuster since it is effectively upright and oil is constantly traveling through it towards the top. You can't say it isn't possible if the air gets trapped in a top corner (for lack of a better term since it is a cylinder). Ultimately the air should works it way out and I think this is part of the idle to 3000 RPM procedure. It must be the determined best way to work out any air.

 

didnt really read the whole entire post, but.

every mark on the aftermarket cam sprokets dont exactly mean one degree they mean 2 degrees. not sure if the ones he has are the same but the aem ones are this way. he said he had one cam at 4 this could mean he has it a an actual 8 degrees moved back or forth. could actually valves kissing something. if the noise doesnt wanna go away.


Ed-