My car has recently started making a tapping/ticking noise from the driver side head it seems. I've held a stick up to both sides and it defiantly coming from there. I pulled a valvecover to find everything in working order and brand new looking as it should with 2K miles on it no broken springs, bent pushrods, or loose rocker arms. I even turned the motor over by hand with nothing visible or audible. So that leads me to believe it may be a lifter. So I put some seafoam in the crankcase and just drove the car about 15 miles and I'm not sure if its because it warmed up or the seafoam but the noise is much quieter and yet sounds faster than before. Is it going away of just because the car was cold before? Any other ideas or suggestions?

 

bump for the night

 

come on no one has ever had this issue.

 

Piston Slap

 

Done any high rpm floggings with some nos recently?

 

nope I hadn't even gone WOT on the car at all recently. I actually don't have spray yet I had the banner up for the contest.

 

Are you sure you have proper size pushrods? Did you replace the lifters when you put on the new heads, or is this a new motor? Need some more info!

Thanks.

 

lifters have 6K maybe on them are are comp, pretty much stock replacements. Also pushrods are proper size as confirmed by my length checker and were replaced with the new cam about 3K ago. The heads were already on the car at that time. Still factory motor with 80K.

 

If it went away with seafoam it's possible you may have a bad lifter. My buddy had a very similar noise your talking about that would be there when the RPMs where up, turns out he spun a bearing, you might have noise from the wrist pin to....what kind of oil pressure do you have?

 

If its a 6-speed , have you missed a gear at redline ?

 

Well I drove the car around again today and the noise seems like it may have gone away, I need to get under the hood while its running to confirm this though as it can't be heard from inside the car unless the radio is off and the windows are down. The car is an auto and although I haven't ruled out piston slap or a spun bearing it happened suddenly and like I said I wasn't even beating on it anytime beforehand.

 

forgot to add oil pressure is above or at 40psi at idle and usually 50-60 while driving .

 

ok so I noticed my exhaust moves around seemingly more than usual when the car is idling and running, seems like it may have an exhaust leak but could that be the problem? If there was a leak at the header would you be able to hear it through listening to that head with a stick?