Ok, ready for some more help with my clacking engine..

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Have you made any more progress with the car? If not, you need to start taking more stuff apart to see what the problem is. Your rocker arms look fine. except for one that is sitting down too much. Maybe a bent pushrod or something, or it could just be the picture. It's normal for a few of them to be sitting on a slant.

You need to at least take your lower intake off. This will give you a good view of the rest of your valve train (lifters and pushrods). You can then take all your rocker arms off and inspect all the pushrods and lifters.
 
ok sorry for taking so long to reply. just in the middle of moving and some other stuff i needed to deal with first. but i checked every pushrod today, and they all looked fine to me. so now my next question is what do i need to do to remove the lower intake? pull the dizzy? fuel rails... anything else? just wondering what issues i might have taking it off, or any special tools i might need. i'm guessing a disconnect for the fuel lines? do i have to pull injectors? stuff like that. any help is appreciated. hoping to get it off tomorrow morning to check the lifters.
 
you dont need a fuel disconnect...

i just unbolt the 4 small bolts holding the rail on the intake, pop it up and usually the injectors come off with the rail. if not just pull them from the intake.

the whole rail should be able to swing around out of the way easily. down lower in the engine bay the metal lines run into rubber flexible line so it will flex there and be able to get out of the way.

then just unbolt the heater tube and unhook the heater core lines and the front line the the water pump, take a big wrench and remove the tube from the intake. it screws into the front part of the intake, and nut holds it down towards the rear on one of the intake bolts (has a stud on top of the bolt with the nut holding it down.

then just unbolt the lower and pull it off. it it hasnt been off in a while it may be stuck pretty good to the heads and block, so you may have to whip out the elbow grease and muscle it out:rolleyes:

chances are your going to spill coolant into the engine so the oil is going to have to be changed before you run the engine again.
 
Okay, it's late and I sorta skimmed through all of the posts but, I didn't see anyone suggest checking your valve springs! I've broken a few in the past....You might try feeling around the little buggers to see if you can feel where one cracked. When I broke mine, the car felt like she was running on 7 cylinders (it was) and when I reached up around the #4 piston's intake valve spring, voila, found the problem! FYI, you can replace them with the heads on the car...it takes a lot of patience, small hands, and requires you keeping sharp objects away whilst you are removing them....if you'd care to have detailed instructions, send me a pm....

Clay
 
ok thanks Foxfan88. would it help if i drained some coolant first then? and haha even the VC's took a BFH and a lot of prying and swearing just to come off (stupid cork gaskets with RTV!@#$*), so if you're warning me about this, i'm not looking forward to it! :rolleyes: and i was due for an oil change anyways, so thats not a big deal. how much do i have to worry about stuff getting inside the engine though? i'm paranoid about even gasket material and maybe a bit of dirt just from taking off the VC's and upper already and seeing the little crap that gets in there...
 
Okay, it's late and I sorta skimmed through all of the posts but, I didn't see anyone suggest checking your valve springs! I've broken a few in the past....You might try feeling around the little buggers to see if you can feel where one cracked. When I broke mine, the car felt like she was running on 7 cylinders (it was) and when I reached up around the #4 piston's intake valve spring, voila, found the problem! FYI, you can replace them with the heads on the car...it takes a lot of patience, small hands, and requires you keeping sharp objects away whilst you are removing them....if you'd care to have detailed instructions, send me a pm....

Clay

ok i'll check that tomorrow too. never felt them for cracks or anything, but they all seem fine just looking at them. i'll check it out though
 
I would just do a compression test, leakdown test if you have access to shop air which sounds like you don't though. The compression test should tell you at least what cylinder is bad, they would both show a hanging valve or some kind of drivetrain problems, you can rent one from a store or buy one for like 20 bucks they're good to have anyways.

And yeah you don't need a feeler gauge to set the rockers since they're the stockers, all you need to do is when you're putting them back on, make sure the pushrod is in the hole in the bottom of the rocker and tighten it down to 25ft lbs with a torque wrench and that's it you don't have to turn the motor over a little bit at a time like you have to do with stud mount rockers.

If you do a compression test make sure you have the throttle wide open while you're cranking and connect the coil wire to a metal part of the motor, I put it over one of the stock header studs that were meant for the stock hooks when they put in the motor, or you can do it with the intake off and not worry about the throttle body thing. Having the spark plugs out make it much easier to crank too.
 
ok thanks Foxfan88. would it help if i drained some coolant first then? and haha even the VC's took a BFH and a lot of prying and swearing just to come off (stupid cork gaskets with RTV!@#$*), so if you're warning me about this, i'm not looking forward to it! :rolleyes: and i was due for an oil change anyways, so thats not a big deal. how much do i have to worry about stuff getting inside the engine though? i'm paranoid about even gasket material and maybe a bit of dirt just from taking off the VC's and upper already and seeing the little crap that gets in there...

I wouldn't worry too much about the little bit of dirt. If you are really worried about it change the oil again after you've started the car up and let it warm up when it's all fixed. Probably wouldn't be a bad idea to change the coolant either because you could have gotten some gunk in there.
 
i know that sound and it's a rod bearing. you can drive it like that for a long time as long as you are easy. we had a v6 van like that and it was driven for 2 year before it finally let go. no rocker in the world is going to make that much noise. sorry
 
ok so got the lower intake off... so now what? how can you tell if a lifter is seized? or anything else i should be looking at. i felt all the springs also, didnt feel any cracks. so where do i go from here? haven't found any kind of damage so far, and its making me worry its something internal...

as for the rod bearing (don't know much about the internals)... but why would it make that kind of noise? worn out and the rod is just flinging around, or what? just trying to picture what you mean. engine was rebuilt about 2 years ago...
 
ok... so can anyone tell me how to check the lifters though? if its not them, i guess i'll go to a compression test? can i do a test with everything off the engine? or am i going to have to put it back together? right now the lower is off, dizzy out, no spark plugs, rad hose off, rockers aren't torqued.... stuff like that?

i have spun a bearing before (not sure what bearing), which is why the rebuild 2 years ago, and it didn't sound anything like this. its hard to tell in the video, but the noise sounded like it was coming from the top of the engine, but it was hard to tell exactly where. sounded like from under the DS valve cover....