Re: 374 Lifter issue?

Posted by Ross On 2015/11/7 7:01:18

You will find that there has been endless discussion on this issue if you begin to dig.

The basic scenario is this: The input shaft to the oil pump wears and begins to allow air to be drawn in. Foamy oil is bad for the engine bearings; they wear and oil pressure begins to drop. Foamy oil combined with low pressure is an impossible combination for hydraulic lifters and the ones farthest from the pump will begin to tap.

So your lifters may still be quite OK, but you will have to do something with the pump and have a good look at all your bearings, especially the center mains.

The old timer's trick my friends and I used when driving tired V-8 Packards as cheap beaters was to fill the oil in to a quart over full. That would keep the air from being drawn into the pump and if the engine still had decent oil pressure you could get tens of thousands of miles of quiet driving.