Lifters, crazy ticking

Thanks for the input everyone. Scott, I found your original post when searching before I started this topic, I appreciate your input as your issue was the closest to mine that I could find. GKP, I'm not 100% certain its the lifters, but the fact that it will disappear after revving the engine once leads me to believe its not the exhaust manifolds. Oddly, its actually gotten better, its now only doing it for about 10 seconds on cold startup. I understand that 20w-50 is a heavy oil, I've been running it in this truck for 5 years with no adverse effects, its been colder than it is now and never had a problem with engine noises. I am going to switch it to a 10w-40 next time, as I found an interesting article when searching posts here that said 20w-50 is really better suited to old worn out overhead cam engines. As I previously mentioned, I am currently running synthetic, and have been for 5 years, Ive been thinking of switching it back to regular old dyno oil, anyone see any possible problems with that? I will probably throw in about 1/2 quart of ATF, run it for 100 miles or so, and then change out the oil for a good 10w40 and see what happens.

If I might just chip in here... firstly the 1995 4L engine is not an overhead cam... it's a bog standard push rod 2 valves per cylinder...
It is also what is known as a "flat tappet" design... this means that as the lifter and push rods go up and down they are meant also to rotate so that they do not get stuck in the same spot and wear out at the contact points with the cam for instance. When the lifters and cam are manufactured, they have a special surface grind which is supposed to promote the rotation effect.

The new full synthetic oils are very "slippery" ...as they should be! However they are too slippery for our ol' flat tappet engines...despite what others may say...and so the rotation effect is not as effective as it should be...this can cause the cam shaft lobes in rover motors to wear adversely ...also the rockers.

The best way to fix this is to run mineral based oil...such as the Magnatec 10-40 ...or their diesel engine 15-40 formulation. The non-synthetic Shell Hwlix 10-40 is also good for this...

There was a LR tech bulletin put out a few years ago re noisy rockers which will cause the problems you are discussing ...the inserts in the rockers to accommodate the push rods go wonky and cause the ticking... check the tech bulletins in the RAVE

hope this helps in your consideration!
cheers

NachoMan77 said:

viperover said:

Coolant out exhaust mmmmm time to pop of them cylinder heads, no additive is going cure your ticking noise.

Best oil is a 10w40 range, keep away from 20w50 as the hydraulic lifters need to bleed down, you cango 5w30 in cooler climates but depends

To add it may be hydraulic lifters but my guess without even seeing the car is water has started the rust process on valves and a few are not closing properbly hence the ticking noise.......

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Sorry to interrupt, viperover, but could you elaborate a little bit on the cons of using 20w50 ?

I'm in the Caribbean, and recently jumped from 10w40 to 20w50 Castrol GTX to make it easier on my old engine. Do you think the higher viscosity in this hot climate can harm the lifters ?

Thanks in advance,

N.

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Castrol GTX is a bog standard base oil, ok in some engines for example the old Ford V6's and 8's, those engines are very different in design to the Rover V8.

If you want to use a 20W50 go for a better grade of oil like for example Shell Helix 20W50, its a good quality oil
In many posts I will push the issue of a 15W40 Diesel oil purley cos of its higher qulaty grade and additive package such as detergents to break down and suspend carbon.
Another problem with our V8 motors is the jamming up of inlet and exhaust valves, a diesel oil wont do this due to the fact that it doesnt carbon up as easily as a basic oil such as GTX, in other words GTX is likely to start carbonising effect on the valve stem due to heat and light oil use where as a Diesel 15W40 wont as requires alot higher temps to start it to carbon up, sounds daft I know.

Just this very week end I replaced all 16 hydraulic lifters, 16 rockers, 16 pushrods and rocker shafts, looking into my intake ports on the cylinder heads was a surprise, it was silver clean which means the Helix diesl is doing its job of cleaning and preventing carbon build up on valve stems, I've done 13 000km's since I did both heads due to valve carbon problems, I know im not going to see that again on this engine or any of my customers.

Preferbly use a 14W40 rated for turbo diesel, you may find it goes dirty quicker that 20W50 base oil but change it again and you'll see it stay cleaner for longer each time for the simple reason that its cleaning your engine.

Some will argue that carbon is required in the piston ring glands, this is true but not to much, no amount of high tec oil will remove carbon on the piston ring glands as it is designed to allow a certain portion to remain and seal up the rings

one could go on for years and never come to a satisfactory conclusion on oils cos its so vast.
Hope this helps

Synthetic oils are not "too slippery" or bad for engines in general. Please read up on motor oil, additive packages, and evolving API standards to prevent misguiding people like that. Newer service level (S*) API oil standards mandate things like lower zinc/phosphate levels to help protect catalytic converters and lower emissions in newer passenger vehicles. The problem is that zinc/phosphate additives are very good for protecting certain types of engines (motorcycles, older rovers, classics, and exotic cars). A new API-certified 10W-40 at your local Auto Zone will probably meet the most current SM standard and have less zinc/phosphate than an API SJ or older 10W-40 from 10 years ago, regardless of its synthetic or conventional composition. Diesel oils meet commercial level (C*) API standards and can have much different additive packages because of the lack of a catalytic converter and different emissions standards for those vehicles.

It is entirely possible that a cheap conventional Diesel oil can out-protect a P38 engine to a point compared to a very good and very new API SM synthetic oil, but that has nothing to do with synthetic vs. conventional composition. A well-designed synthetic oil will usually outperform conventional oil with a similar additive package. For example: AMSOIL AMO 10W-40 specifically touts its high-zinc formula. They recommend it for SL and older service-level API standards, a bunch of C commercial Diesel API standards, motorcycle standards, and many other Diesel engine standards. This oil should perform better over time than a conventional Diesel oil with a similar additive package. The synthetic oil will have higher shear stability and lower volatility, among other properties, than the conventional oil. This means that the synthetic oil will protect better than the conventional oil as mileage increases.

The Rover manual recommends SG, SH, or SJ oils. You can see that Castrol GTX Diesel 15W-40 meets SJ in addition to CI-4, but Castrol GTX 10W-40 meets SM and must have less zinc/phosphate.

I am in the middle of an extended oil analysis comparison on our Rovers. Unfortunately, I do not have the results of the AMO 10W-40 yet. That oil is in my wife's Rover at the moment and will not come out for a few months. I am testing 4 different synthetics, but I tested the same cheap conventional oil in each rover as a baseline. There are some good links to oil information in the Buell 1125R motorcycle section of the page. I will certainly post the final results when I am finished. Hopefully something in there is helpful.
http://hildstrom.com/projects/oil/

I thought I would add my 2 pennies to this thread based on the original post. I have just gone through this exact same issue with my '02 P38 4.6 and thought I would pass on a few things that I learned..

When you use the head gasket repair stuff ALWAYS change your oil afterward.. Why? Because if there is the slightest leak from the water jacket into the oil system, the sodium silicate in the repair solution will set solid on contact with oil.. (I later learned that this is how they disable the engines on cars traded in on Obama's Cash for Clunkers program - interesting youtube videos on the subject!)

How do I know personally? Well, my symptoms were identical to Max's, I used the CRC Nanotechnology Head Gasket Repair stuff (bright green bottle) I too followed the instructions to the letter and even called their tech support as the P38 doen't have a removable thermostat.. As a side-note, my engine showed no evidence of water in the oil, just water vapor out of the tailpipes and pressuizing water system.
As the car was idling waiting for the stuff to do it's magic, I heard a couple of light lifter taps - I didn't think too much about it as I had never just let the Rover idle for 30 mins and figured it would be the lower oil pressure for an extended period that caused the lifters to not fill correctly.
Anyway, next step is to empty system and allow the liquid glass repair stuff to cure overnight.
Next day, I flushed the coolant system out a lot and fired up the Rover. Bingo - no head gasket leak!! Oh was I happy... for about 5 minutes... I took it out for a drive and within a mile I stopped at a red light.. Lifters were rattling like hell - all 16 of them! I turned around and headed straight home. As I pulled up, I saw something that I had not seen in years - a flickering oil light. Shut her down right away and took the Audi to pick up engine oil flush, oil, filter etc.
I changed the oil, and when I fired it up - no oil pressure. So, forgetting the newer motors are different from the old 3.5 rover that could suffer from a not so self-priming oil pump, I took an external hand pump and proceeded to force oil through cooler lines, filter housing ports etc etc (Hey -I was desparate!)
I started it up and I had oil pressure again, but still quite noisy top end. I let it idle, even reved it a couple of times to try to get the lifters to fill up.. No joy. Then the oil light came on again..

I put it on the back of a flatbed and off to my mechanic it went..
Well, so much for the head gasket sealant saving me a motor tear down!!
By chemical analysis of the oil I drained after the treatment (I have to admit now that it felt kinda sticky compared to the fresh stuff) - it turned out it was contaminated with the sodium silicate liquid glass.
The tiny bit of liquid glass that must've seeped into the oil caused the oil the thicken enough that in tighter gaps like lifters, it couldn't flow.It also seized the oil pressure relief valve too which was the ultimate cause of no pressure building.
Bottom line, if I had changed the oil before firing it back up, I would've been fine. As it turned out, when the motor was torn down, the liner on #7 cylinder had slipped down by a few thou, it was not a head gasket at all..
I am almost through with having my freshly rebuilt heads bolted to a new short block and installed.. All in all, I shouldn't have been so **** lazy and not pulled the heads off in the first place! Nice to know the liquid glass sealed a liner problem though!
What I will also say is this, if a shop quotes a fortune to do a head gasket job on a Rover - take it elsewhere.. As my mechanic put it, of all the engines out there today, the Rover V8 is a 40 year old pushrod lump, not some whizzy multivalve unit designed by rocket scientists (like my A8). There is no reason that it should cost 2k to change head gaskets on an engine like this. No wonder people (me) throw a $30 fix in there and hope for the best. :shock:
Hope this helps someone.
Dan.