Z28~SS

I recently did a heads / cam swap in my 01 SS. All has been great and the car runs very strong. Well into the low 11s. This weekend I was cruising around and decided to get on it pretty hard. When I did right when I was getting ready to shift to 2nd(6800) gear I notice the oil pressure had dropped to 20 PSI. I immediately let out and coast ,then drive easily home. I could hear the motor had some pretty good lifter ticking going on. Oil pressure was reading fine at idle.

When I got home I checked the oil and sure enough it was approximately 2 quarts low. Yes I was pissed at myself for being a bonehead and surprised this thing consumed so much oil so fast.

I added oil to it and fired it up,all noise was gone and had plenty of oil pressure.Looks like I got lucky.. Hmm nope not completly.

Since this happened I have a distinct lifter tap at 2000 RPM,any other RPM it is fine. If I rev the motor it just makes all the usuall LS1 heads/cam noises. But right at 2k it taps pretty good, enough to very noticable when you drive it.

Ive since pulled rockers and pushrods on bothsides checking stuff out and all looks good. No bent pushrods or fubared rockers. All springs seem fine and there was no slop anywhere as I was pulling it appart.

The are new LS7 lifters. Did I possibly starve a lifter so bad it wont pump back up? Ive tried a little trans fluid, even some STP, some of the old school tricks to pump lifters up. But it still taps at 2k . The motor does not miss or run bad it just now has a lifter noise. This is not a knocking noise it is a valvetrain tapping noise.

Should I pull the heads and check the lifters? Any advise is appreciated.

conan

iTrader: (5)

Have you drained your oil to see if there is any excess metal wear on your drain plug? Also when you were torrqueing down your rockers you would have noticed if any of the lifters were bleeding down on you. I would think that your fine but it wouldn't hurt to pull the heads if the sound gets worse.

Z28~SS

I have not checked the drain plug yet. No slop while I was pulling pushrods,all lifters felt firmly up from what I could tell. It definatley does not not sound like a low end knock. I would think all the lifters would pump back up.But it seems I may have one that is making noise. I dont want to run the car at all making this noise.

MrElectric03

iTrader: (71)

Ive had a lifter making noise for a while now since my h/c swap. Will be pulling the head off next weekend to replace all drivers side lifters, I can tell its coming from that side but I asked around and couldnt find a way to test the lifter either in or out of the motor.

I also used LS7s.

conan

iTrader: (5)

You would know best if it is unusualy loud for you valve train. If I thought something wasn't right with my engine I'd get the heads off and check it out. It sounds like you have alot time and money in your set up don't want to loose the hole thing over a 300$ set of lifters.

Z28~SS

Yep Im going to pull the heads and stick in another set of LS7's for peace of mind.Im also going to replace the trays this time. Hopefully all I did was damage a lifter.

OffspringZ28

iTrader: (8)

update?