I hate suggesting snake oil, But seafoam works for me. Lifters and complicated little buggers. They work great until they dont work great anymore. Usually a little pirece of carbon gets stuck in a little itty bitty hole. Try the seafoam, It wont hurt.

 

Whats the longest amount of time you can run seafoam in the motor until it starts to hurt stuff?

 

I only run it for about 20 minutes at idle. i dont drive it with seafoam in it.

 

a little update... after reading a can of seafoam, it says it can be used for long term cleaning. So i put the amount it says in the oil, ill drive it for awhile and see how it ends up.

 

if that doesnt work you can put transmission fluid in the oil and it should help. I had a jimmy that did the same thing. I drained the oil and filled it with straight trans fluid. Ran it for about 15min then drained it and mixed oil and trans fluid 25/75. Ran it for another 15min then drained it and added 50/50 mix. Then 75/25 and finally back to straight oil. Im sure some people will tell you that you shouldnt do that but trust me. Its not going to hurt anything. I just wouldnt recommend running it with a mix in it for a long period of time. The detergents in the trans fluid will break up any sludge and varnish that is most likely causing your lifter to stick.

The cause to the sludge build up is probably coolant leaking into the oil. I would recommend doing a pressure check on the cooling system. I found my intake was leaking which is common on these motors. So i had to replace the intake gaskets too. After all of that my ticking was gone.

 

doing the front end rebuild, we noticed the intake is leaking but running down the front of the motor, not sure about internal yet. The oil is about 800 miles from being changed and its just about as clean as when its new...ive never seen this on a motor. Also remember that seafoam has been in there for awhile. The tick is still there but i think its getting lighter, so maybe it will just go away.

 

An anti drain back filter will not prevent oil from draining from your lifters or most of your engine for that matter...only the oil line between the engine and the filter. It might for example, reduce a 4 second lifter tick at startup to 2 seconds. Listen to your dad....we've been around.

 

Ok guys i know this is old. Ive replaced the lifters,intake gaskets,spider injection,oil lines, new filter, oil, new fuel filter, and water pump. I know most of that has nothing to do with the lifters ( just a run down). Basically with all the new parts, it still has this random tapping. Its not as bad as before, but it still does it...any ideas?

 

whats your oil pressure?

 

60-cold start
40's-driving
20-25 idleing

Thats ballpark numbers.