Re: Loud clicking from my '52

Posted by Jim Kavanagh On 2018/10/26 19:37:29

I pulled the valve covers again after heating the engine up. It needs t run a good bit before making noise, but then it is quite loud. All the lifter assemblies seem well oiled and there is a good amount of oil flowing through the lifter slots in the block, with oil coming out the front hole.It seems to be more oil flow through the middle sections of lifters than the ends, but there is a lot of flow throughout. In fact, I get a good amount of oil all over the place running without the valve covers.

I put my stethosope on each lifter but really can not hear one that seems to account for the clicking noise. That is I can not actually hear the clicking transmitting through the lifter. Maybe just my poor hearing.

I did note one lifter that has a kind of "twang" sound, like a spring being depressed and released. The valve spring on that lifter looks fine and the keeper is clearly seated. I took a compression reading of that cylinder hot, and it is about 15 lbs less then when i took it cold and took a lot longer to build. I don't know if that means much though. I will try listening to this lifter tomorrow with the engine cold to see if there is any change.

Assuming this is the problem lifter, is it possible to change this out without pulling the head. I used to do valve springs on small blocks by using an air fitting in the spark plus hole to fill the cylinder with air and keep the valve closed as the spring and keeper were removed. This seems like it might work with a flatty?