Tappety Tappety for a few minutes

Hi all.
I've got one lifter on my 3.5 which taps away for a couple of minutes then pumps up no problem when starting from cold.
Ive also got a valley gasket oil leak so I was gonna use the opportunity to sort out the lifter.

Question is I'm aware of the problems and risk of trying to run in a new lifter on and old cam etc So I was wondering if it's ever successful stripping the things down and cleaning them out? I know there's not a lot in them but I'm wondering if mines just partially blocked as it pumps up when warm.
Or could I just swap the internals so that the lifter base is the same?
I don't really want to go into camshaft replacement just yet.

Try running a good quality detergent oil in it for a few weeks and see if that clears it.

We had one tapping after the engine rebuild, and it has now cleared, but took a while.

Peter

I did chuck some Wynns Hydraulic lifter treatment in about 300 miles ago but no luck. I'm running 20/50 oil in this engine. Would it benefit from a thinner oil?

I run ours on Chevron 10W/40 Semi-Synthetic Diesel Oil.

Never used any additives.

Peter

I've always wondered about using diesel oil in a petrol. I tried it in the wifes car but it frothed the oil too much. I think I read somewhere that diesel oil doesn't have as much anti frothing agent. Or maybe I could be making it up. I can't remember.
I've ordered a lifter to have a go at swapping the internals. We'll see how it goes.

Many fleets run diesel oil in everything, we've run our V8 on Chevron Supreme 10W-40 semi-synthetic diesel oil since we put the short engine in, and it has been very good indeed. Keeps the internals clean and takes out a lot of things like sticky cam followers, which we had.

We also run on LPG which extends the oil life as well.

Peter

listerdiesel said:

Try running a good quality detergent oil in it for a few weeks and see if that clears it.

We had one tapping after the engine rebuild, and it has now cleared, but took a while.

Peter

Click to expand...

Sorry but I completely disagree with this suggestion.
Running an oil with higher detergent properties is likely to cause sludge deposits to become dislodged with the potential for such deposits to block an oil gallery leading to premature engine failure due to oil starvation.

If you want to run a dirty engine like the RV8 on modern oils that's fine but only after the initial break in period on a new build engine where there won't be any sludge deposits.

Flushing oil (Wynn's engine flush) was always part of my service bill when my disco was serviced by a LR main dealer, but was used I don't know.

There's a bit on using flushing or diesel oils in petrol engines in this link so make-up your mind. Car Bibles : The Engine Oil Bible

MGBGTV8 said:

Sorry but I completely disagree with this suggestion.
Running an oil with higher detergent properties is likely to cause sludge deposits to become dislodged with the potential for such deposits to block an oil gallery leading to premature engine failure due to oil starvation.

If you want to run a dirty engine like the RV8 on modern oils that's fine but only after the initial break in period on a new build engine where there won't be any sludge deposits.

Click to expand...

Sorry, but I have to disagree

The whole point of detergent oil is to disperse and hold in solution that which would be deposited out in the sump etc otherwise.

I've never ever seen an engine, dirty inside or not, petrol or diesel that had sludge deposits freed off and then blocking oil galleries under normal engine running conditions.

As most if not all galleries are at oil pressure, it would take a peculiar type of sludge to hold oil pressure at bay, even if the gallery was small. If the engine was OK before the detergent oil was introduced, it would not make any significant impact on the running of the engine, other than to start taking the dirt out.

The worst case of sludging I ever saw was on new Perkins engines in a fleet of Bedford CF's that were run on ordinary car oil, not detergent. They had huge volumes of dirty sludge in the sump but nothing blocked up, the engines failed when the sludge levels got too much for the pump to suck.

My son's D2 was about as dirty as they come internally, and that has covered 12000 miles on detergent with no issues resulting from the use of detergent. My own engine was a short motor fitting, the cam followers etc etc were transferred from the previous engine.

Peter

Could be a pad on a rocker, To be honest, if I could be bothered to strip down enough to replace my followers, I would replace the cam, maybe with something a tad fruitier!
I had a bit of a tapper on a low mileage (but very old and unused for a few years) v8 after a while, with regular oil changes it did eventually disappear!