Need some help with this one guys. I just replaced the oil pump on my wife's 2001 trans am WS6 w/ 6 speed manual trans that has been sitting up for almost a year until I had time to work on it. We were in the car together when the pump failed while sitting in traffic and noticed the pressure drop right away and killed the engine and towed it home to make sure there wasn't any additional damage. I did have to restart it for about 30 sec to reposition it for the wrecker.

Upon the first start up and a couple short test runs the car ran smooth and quite just as it did before the oil pump failure.

This morning after leaving the house and hopping on the interstate for the first time I noticed a ticking noise that was not present when cold and warming up and didn't start until after running fine for about 5 minutes and fully warm apx. 210 deg. The engine started making a noise of all of a sudden and grew louder till it was clearly audible inside the car and over the sound of the performance exhaust. The sound was very similar to a loud exhaust leak tick and clearly increased with engine speed. I did not however rev it about 3500 rpm for obvious reasons although there was no noticeable power loss.

I pulled over popped the hood and tried to pin point the location the sound was coming from. My best guess was somewhere near the intake manifold near the driver side valvecover. It did not sound like it was coming from the exhaust manifold. I killed the engine checked the oil level which was full. and let it sit for about 2-3 minutes. I restarted the engine and the sound was GONE!. It was completely gone. I started driving it back to house and after a minute or two the sound came back. I drove the rest of the way home apx. 5 miles and parked it.

Any ides what this could be? My first guess is maybe a faulty lifter but I am really not sure. Hopefully someone here can help point me i the right direction.
The car has about 130K miles on it and is all stock internally except for the new SLP oil pump & double roller timing chain I just installed. It has been well cared for and we have owned it since we bought it with 40k miles in 05.

I tried searching on the forum and cant find a logical answer. The engine does not normally make much noise at idle and if it did you couldn't hear it above the exhaust. I have ruled out the typical noisy ls1 piston slap stuff. This is a new mechanical problem of some sort.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

 

[QUOT E= Arch Ilu na;18074 381]N eed duckingsome help with this one guys. I just replaced the oil pump on my wife's 2001 trans am WS6 w/ 6 speed manual trans that has been sitting up for almost a year until I had time to work on it. We were in the car together when the pump failed while sitting in traffic and noticed the pressure drop right away and killed the engine and towed it home to make sure there wasn't any additional damage. I did have to restart it for about 30 sec to reposition it for the wrecker.

Upon the first start up and a couple short test runs the car ran smooth and quite just as it did before the oil pump failure.

This morning after leaving the house and hopping on the interstate for the first time I noticed a ticking noise that was not present when cold and warming up and didn't start until after running fine for about 5 minutes and fully warm apx. 210 deg. The engine started making a noise of all of a sudden and grew louder till it was clearly audible inside the car and over the sound of the performance exhaust. The sound was very similar to a loud exhaust leak tick and clearly increased with engine speed. I did not however rev it about 3500 rpm for obvious reasons although there was no noticeable power loss.

I pulled over popped the hood and tried to pin point the location the sound was coming from. My best guess was somewhere near the intake manifold near the driver side valvecover. It did not sound like it was coming from the exhaust manifold. I killed the engine checked the oil level which was full. and let it sit for about 2-3 minutes. I restarted the engine and the sound was GONE!. It was completely gone. I started driving it back to house and after a minute or two the sound came back. I drove the rest of the way home apx. 5 miles and parked it.

Any ides what this could be? My first guess is maybe a faulty lifter but I am really not sure. Hopefully someone here can help point me i the right direction.
The car has about 130K miles on it and is all stock internally except for the new SLP oil pump & double roller timing chain I just installed. It has been well cared for and we have owned it since we bought it with 40k miles in 05.

I tried searching on the forum and cant find a logical answer. The engine does not normally make much noise at idle and if it did you couldn't hear it above the exhaust. I have ruled out the typical noisy ls1 piston slap stuff. This is a new mechanical problem of some sort.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.[/QUOTE]


What weight oil are you using? Could be a collapse Lifter but sounds like it could be more like a pinched oring in the oil pump And sucking in some air

 

Rocker arm trunions going bad? Pull the valve cover and see if they are still tight against the pushrods when the valves are closed.

 

Thanks SIXSPDSS
I filled it with Mobil1 Full Syn 10w30 before the first start up. Just before i discovered the hard way that the gasket for the old oil filter was still stuck to the motor when I put the new filter on. after running the car for about 30 sec. on the initial crank up i was short about 2 quarts so I topped it off with some Mobile 1 full syn 5w40 i had left over from my truck.

I don't think its sucking air at the pump o ring because i was very careful putting it in and it didn't fight me too much. Adding assembly lube was a good idea there. Also iif it was sucking air wouldnt the pressure guage bounce. Thats what it did when the old pump started going out.

JRENIGAR I think your suggestion makes sense I will give that a try and report back. Thanks.

 

Anyone else agree or disagree?

 

Not sure but you could have a messed up a rod bearing. I had a loud ticking noise were it would only come up when warm. I had 3 different garages tell me it sounded like a lifter. So I replaced them all and started it up and it still didn't change anything. my oil was 40 psi at idle when warm so we could not figure it out. So I finally pulled the engine out and took it all apart and one of the rod bearings was destroyed... it didn't spin so it could still build oil pressure. I fixed that and put it back together and that fixed it. I'm not saying that could be your problem but if you replaced the lifters and it didn't do anything, that could be it since you lost oil pressure and you ran it for a little

 

Thanks, that is good to know because i wouldn't have thought that would be a possibility since it doesn't make any noise at all until its been running for a while. I have heard rod knocking before in older Chevy small blocks and it was much more sudden consistent and deeper knocking sound. The noise my motor is making is more of a tapping or ticking. I am really hoping its not a rod. lol. I am currently rebuilding the motor in my Ducati because of a spun rod bearing and don't have room and cash for another engine rebuild at the moment.

I will get a chance to check the lifters this weekend and can easily check for play in the rockers but the motor will be cold and the motor doesn't make noise when cold or even after its been off for just a few minutes. I don't think I have the ability to really check them when they are actively making noise. Is there a way to do this? Can the motor be run with the valve cover off?

Can anyone tell me how I could tell if a lifter was bad?

Sorry for the newb questions but I am much more familiar with motorcycle engines than the LS. My bike doesn't even have pushrods or lifters lol.

 

I have a suggestion if you are careful working around the engine running. After the engine is hot and knocking pull each fuel injector plug off one at a time and see if the knock sound changes. Even better but harder to do is to pull each spark plug wire off one at a time and see if it changes the sound. If its a lifter it WON"T change, If its a rod bearing, rod or piston it will change or go away. Good Luck grasshopper

 

Thanks RockinWS6 that sounds like a good idea. I will try that. Have you done this before and actually heard the sound change on a bottom end problem?

 

Absolutely!

 

Do to my work schedule I havent had a chance to take the valve covers off yet but I did discover something new when tring to demonstrate the problem to a friend that does mechanic work.

The motor would not make any noise at idle regardless of engine temp or how long I let it run. 20 minutes plus in this case. I was only able to get the noise come back when revving the motor above 3000 rpm and holding it there for a few minutes then it came fairly quickly 1-2 minutes. then continued to make the noise at a slower rate when let back down to idle. Over the course of the next 2-3 minutes of running at idle the noise faded away. Revving up brought it back. Then it would fade away again at idle.
Does this make any sense to anyone?

Oh and my friend also thought the sound was coming from the driver side of the intake manifold.

 

BUMP!!

I am experiencing the exact same issue. I've checked both pushrods and rocker arms and everything is perfect. I've even replaced the header gaskets with GM MLS ones with no resolve. The ticking sound came right after my heads and fast intake swap. (new lifters/trays too) I don't think it's a rod bearing or anything of that sort as it performed great on the dyno (458rwhp) and because my tuner said he was reading a slight exhaust leak on the driver side during the tune, which he thought was the culprit. I replaced the gasket as suggested, but it still makes the sound. I am leaking a little tranny fluid at the bellhousing too, could a cracked flex plate make that noise?

I'm running out of ideas on what it could be. Any help would be appreciated!

 

Also, the ticking sound gradually appears when I hold the throttle at 1500RPMs for about 30 seconds (in park, so can't be tranny/flexplate issue) and fades away as the RPM drop down to idle. The ticking sound is very noticeable under the car as well as in the cabin. I'm starting to think I may have received a weak lifter and it is struggling when asked to work consistently at anything higher than idle. However, wouldn't a faulty or struggling lifter make noise at idle as well, especially cold starts, instead of waiting until the car is at operating temp and driven?

Hunting this down is driving me crazy!

 

I would think a lifter would make more noise at idle, since pressure is lower vs revving.

 

It's called piston slap. It was a nuisance in Early LS engines. In 04 GM went to a floating piston pin design and coated piston skirts. Don't quote me as gospel but IIRC there was some redesign on either the piston skirt or changes in piston-to-wall clearance. Helped considerably. Although annoying...it goes away after the engine warms up to operating temperature.

 

Classic o ring leaking air into oil stream.

 

Sorry, I know for a fact it's not piston slap.

Can an 'O' ring fail just by turning on the car? I only ask because the car sat over the winter, I then proceeded to swap heads, lifters, intake, fuel rials, and injectors and then started the car for the first time since before winter last year. The car never ticked before going into storage and started as soon as I took the car around the block after the head/intake swap.

 

So I cracked to heads in my camaro it has a 350 small block vortec motor. I got everything put back together new heads and all. Now the is a ticking noise coming from the drivers side mid block and it gets worse if you Rev it up I was told I had a galled piston what do you guys think?

 

Overheated car now it makes a ticking noise at idle the increases as it getstands warmer or if you Rev it up mechanic said it was a galled piston what do you guys think?

 

T
Same think is happening on my 2002 v6 3.8l camaro culprit is a faulty powersteering pump bearing pulley is sliding back and forth causing a misalined belt squeak and a tick and tapping noise your mentioning car sat 8 years only 93,000 miles and it looks brand new