i was driving my car home from work tonight and realized i could hear the valvetrain over the exhaust. its never been a really quiet topend but it seems noisier than before.

car is a 2000 ss with a pat g specd cam 231 232 .612 .588, i think its an lsl xer cam but im not sure
has patriot dual gold .650 lift springs with quite a decent amount of.miles on them at stock height.
not sure on pushrod size, i think theyre 7.4s
it has stock rockers.

i havent taken anything apart yet, just noticed that it is louder earlier tonight. maybe im just being paranoid or maybe something is bent/broken
i took a video with my phone, any insight would be appreciated

 

oil pressure it great

the exhaust cutout rattles quite a bit and you can hear it through the headers
i stepped back a little to try and show how loud it is. its not crazy loud like a lifter tapping or rod knocking.
whats weird is it hasnt really been beat on much lately, i broke an inner spring about 3 weeks ago and replaced just the one broken one with a spare patriot dual gold and have been fairly easy on it afterwards.
im planning on replacing all of them but it wasnt in the budget at the time the other one broke.

it didnt seem any louder after i changed that spring but maybe i just didnt notice it

 

Any change in gas mileage?
It could possibly be an exhaust leak, but I'd still pop the valve covers and check for any lose, damaged, or broken parts.

 

havent noticed any change in mileage
i checked the header bolts last time i took the covers off, when it broke a spring, its not leaking from the flange.

it doesnt sound or act like a broken spring, im thinking maybe a bent pushrod or rocker failing

 

Bent pushrod or rocker failing are very possible, did you do the trunion upgrade on the stock rockers..?

 

sounds like loose rocker

 

You could try to add the comp trunion kit to the rockers and see if that helps. I'd definately change the springs if you had one fail.

I just went threw a bunch of crap with my car taping. It showed no signs of a oil pressure problem but it was the oil pump oring on the pickup tube. Don't rule it out. Mine slowly got loud like yours and continued to get worse until it would tap bad if I reved it over 1500rpm. Then it would go away if I let it idle.

 

Drain the oil and look for needle bearings, I had a rocker come apart without getting noisey but that's a good place to start. Probably a good idea to change those springs and do the trunion upgrade, might not hurt to replace the pushrods too!!

 

ordering some bryan tooley springs today, havent had a chance to pull it apart yet but i know i need springs anyway.
it has hardended pushrods, do they still bend? figured a valve would bend or break before hardened pushrods would.
i did a leakdown test when the spring broke and everything checked out ok.
unless my noise is unrelated to the spring break i think the only thing.it could be is a rocker or lifter.

 

took it apart today, guess the needle bearings wanted to be in the oil more than they wanted to be on the rocker.
it was complety trashed, not sure how it even stayed on. the pushrod for that rocker also had a very slight bend

good thing i ordered everything from tooley already, wont be down for more than a day or so

 

Sounds like you got lucky, post up when you get it back together.

 

putting it back together tonight. new tooley springs and pushrods look like quality stuff. comp trunions were pretty easy to install with a cheapo harbor freight press. hopefully ill put the rockers on in the morning and fire it up.
didnt pull the heads to check any lifters, hope it was just that busted rocker causing the noise.

 

comp valve spring tool made it pretty easy, bought some longer bolts for.it though.
the ones they send only caught a few threads, wasnt real comfortable with a steel bolt in aluminum being pulled on by the springs.
went ahead and changed seals while i was there

 

also relocated the tcs, passenger side wires, repainted the valve covers amd coils and rerouted the catch can hoses, looks pretty clean now

 

Did you originally put that patG cam in or did you buy the car with it installed? Just curious..

So all of the needles came out of the rocker? yikes..

 

i bought it this way, a guy from iowa here one tech, redrocketz28, built the car when he bought it. ive just been fortunate enough to replace most of the top end, with 20k miles er so on the cammed setup.
car just rolled past 60k, just glad it didnt break something worse than it did. A cpl hundred in new parts and its better than new.

it spit out all of the needles, i didnt find a single one under the valve cover. I ran a magnet/old speaker across the oil pan when i changed it earlier and i got maybe 20 out. Im sure there are a few more in there but i doubt the hurt anything, ive seen a sbc with a snapon pen magnet in the oil pan for over 5 years without a problem. Im not too worried about a cpl needle bearings

 

A snap on magnet pen probablly stuck to the bottom of the oil pan, those needle bearings are small and could easily get kicked up by the crank.... Sounds like you got 90% of them out.. tough call to make if it were me..

 

wait just realized you can count the needle bearings from your stockers and see how many they have, and you said you pulled out 20? find out and subtract 20 and see how much if any are left..

you might of gotten all of them..