Noisy Lifters

Posted by Jim L. in OR On 2014/10/21 0:48:29

I all,

Today I finally wrapped up a project that should have taken a weekend but took 3 months. That project was seeing if I couldn't quiet the hydraulic lifters in my '51 200 Deluxe. They were making so much noise that it sounded like I had a whole troupe of Spanish Dancers - complete with Castanets" under the hood.

Did the usual opening: Drain the radiator, remove the head and valve covers. The latter after putting the RF corner of the car on jack stands so I could remove the tire and the access panel. Dug out my trusty Valve Spring Compressor, plugged all the oil drains in the lifter chamber, removed all the keepers and then the valves, springs and finally the lifters placing each one in it's proper place in a lifter rack I made out of a length of 4X4. After that, it was disassemble them and blow them out with compressed air then, back in the rack. The next step was the leak-down test detailed in the FSM. I was delighted but puzzled to find that all but one of the lifters I could remove check out fine. The one that didn't I replaced with the best of the lifters I had harvested from one of my spare engines - along with the keepers.

The one lifter that I couldn't get out of the cam follower I decided to leave in place as from what I could gather from the forum really wasn't likely to do any damage. There was only one other abnormal situation. That was the lifter that had TOO MUCH ROOM in its cam follower. For that I just tried to find the lifter out of my stash that moved around the least and call it good. There is no way I was going to remove the cam for this given the little it's driven.

At last it was time to reverse the process and put the whole thing back together. Getting the valve spring keepers or locks installed was a real treat! I worked on the first one for 1 & 1/2 hours. Back to the relevant sections in the Forum where I found the "Grease Trick". I would be showing my age if I said a jingle from the old Brylcreme ads came back to me - "a little dab will do ya". By the end, I was getting those things in pretty fast. Maybe too fast.

After the valve train was all back together and the head was torqued down but before I installed the plugs, I decided to use the starter to spin the engine just to make sure everything stayed put that was supposed to. It did! Put the plugs back in, got cleaned up enough to get in the car and fired her up.

Sounded real good for the first 15 seconds or so.... Then it was making all sorts of noises I knew it shouldn't be making. So I shut her down, locked up the garage and went in and fixed a drink!

Two weeks later and I opened up the valve chamber again and I immediately saw what the problem was. One set of the keepers or locs I thought was firmly in place - wasn't. It had come loose and the result was the spring was just sitting there with the valve inside doing nothing. Out comes the valve spring compressor, bag with the spare valve lock or keepers inside and after re-plugging the drain, fished the two errant keepers out and after putting a dab of grease on my finger put two clean keepers on the the valve then lowered the spring and everything held. Took the plugs out and ran the starter - this time, a few more shots of cranking before I put it all back together and with everything crossed, tried it again.

SUCCESS ! ! ! And SILENT success as well. Well, not completely silent as I still had those two lifters - one too tight in the cam follower and the other too loose; but compared to the cacophony that was present before - what's a couple of soft clicks every so often.

So there it is. My first major Packard engine intervention. And it RUNS ! ! ! !