Heyas. New to site. /wave.


I have a late model 97 (has the 98 electronics in it so I'm assuming late model 97.) recently I have developed a mystery tick. I worked for Dodge in 02-03 and am aware of the timing chain issue but this is new and different. While driving it seems to come from the passenger side and sitting with hood up it seems to come from everywhere. I used to have a 66 Coronet 440 that always blew the donut gasket on the exhaust and to me it is 99% the same sound.

But my friend is trying to convince me its a lifter. Any ideas on a very easy way to tell the diff? Right now money is a huge problem so anything that may require new gaskets will have to wait a week or so.

Oh and I have owned the truck since it was 3 months old (bought it early 98 from the original dealership with 3k miles) and do 90% of my on work on it. So i am pretty familiar with most of its odd noises but this one has me baffled. Just put new plugs and wires in yesterday and no change.

 

Are you sure its not just the injectors? When they age they can make a ticking sound.. Every Car/Truck I've owned makes some sort of noise from the injectors at some point in their life.

 

My Dakota started a ticking just this last week but I think its the weather and I hear it in the morrinings mostly.

These things come and go if it gets loud then I would worry.

Im not even sure what a ticking means with my 2.5 engine maybe one of my lifters is sticking just a bit.

Oil change time I guess it has been 6 months.

 

could be a lifter tick, my friends' jeeps with the 2.5 and the 4.0 both had lifter ticks. also could be an exhaust leak which sounds just like a lifter tick. Lifters usually stop once its nice and hot. Also, a synthetic oil change stopped the tick in the 4.0 way back when (amsoil is the way to go if you're still running conventional)
hope this helps
-jm5

 

Over the weekend I messed with it quite a bit. Does not tick at idle and only begins to tick when you give it throttle and then it's just for half a second. Once you back off or leave the throttle in a fixed position it goes away. I mainly notice it during acceleration and since I have a lead foot I hear it alot. Seems to be the worst at 0-30 mph. As for the Exaust leak does anyone know if a cold engine with a spray bottle of soapy water might work? Use it often for tracking down other sorts of leaks. OH! and it seems it gets more frequent as the engine warms up.


For the injectors: I dropped 4 oz of Marvels in a half tank. Once the tank is down I am going to run some STP or some other injector cleaner through another full tank.

For the oil: My son and I did an oil change Sat morning and threw a quart of Marvels in there. I have only used Castrol GTX from day 1. (cept one painful time when my pressure dropped very low and I swerved into a Valvoline station. Changed it back to Castrol a couple weeks later.) I will run the Marvel mix for a couple weeks then change out again.

 

Sounds good to me but Marvels in the oil is a cleaner more than anything it breaks up any sludge in the engine your oil will turn black fast as I say it’s a cleaner.

All these engines get a ticking as they age if it gets loud then worry use some good quality oil is all you can do.

What you describe is exactly what I started hearing this last week.

Have you been on a long freeway drive in sometime I know gas is so $$ but if you have the time give it a long tip and see if that gets rid of it constant stop and go city driving is hard on a car. Sometimes all you need is to give it a good long haul to burn things out.

 

Yeh that's why I'm only going to leave the marvels in for a week or 2 then do a oil/lucas mix. As for the highway driving I live about 20 mins from anywhere I want to go so at least 3x a week I am doing 45mins to an hour back and forth. I actually noticed the tick after a 30 min hwy drive to a friends house in the city. that was last weekend. Just want to nail this thing down b4 I am SOL for a vehicle. Was also thinking that if the tick gets worse with the marvels in that may slide me more towards the lifter than exhaust or injectors. Wish I could afford the timing chain kit since its hard to hear anything over that friggin rattle..

 

if the tick goes away at idle and comes when you are giving gas check your evap solinoid it's on the firewall next to the brake booster if the rubber mount is bad it will sound like a tick outside and a crankshaft knock inside the cab check it out

 

I don't usually post much about Marvel Mystery Oil here. I will say this much though, being a consistent MMO user for almost 3 years now. You can't expect 4 ounces of MMO added in with 11 gallons of gas only one time to do anything to fix the noise problems. If you have fuel injector or fuel delivery problems, first you need something a lot stronger to start out with to clean the injectors, like a BG Induction Service or Ever Wear fuel system service. You can get those done at most garages and tire shops. There is also a DIY induction service kit you can buy at Auto Zone, it's made by 3M and I have read it works but I personally have no experience with it. It costs about $30.00.

Once you have a good strong fuel service done, then you can run a good stout Polyetheramine (PEA) cleaner for a full tank of gas. Red Line Si-1, Regane High Mileage or regular Regane are the ones with the highest concentrations of PEA. Chevron Techron Concentrated cleaner is real good too (Techron is on a buy one, get one free sale at Auto Zone in June). It's a good idea to run a PEA-based cleaner a few times a year, more often if you have to buy cheap gas or Northern/Winter gas with all its additives. Some people add an ounce or so of Techron or Si-1 to every 5 gallons on every fill-up.

Once you get the system good and clean, then you can add MMO at every fuel fill. Start out by dosing the whole tank at the recommended dose on the bottle, 4 ounces to each 10 gallons. If you have the 22 gallon tank, put in a little over 8 ounces. Run that tank down as far as you can and from that point on, only dose the amount of gas it takes to fill up the tank. I fill up right around the 1/4 tank mark. I know that is usually about 14.5 to 15.5 gallons. So I add 6 ounces of MMO at the pump before I pump the gas in. You have to experiment with the dose, 4 oz. may be right for you or it may give you less MPG. More is not always better with MMO, or any other additive. My truck does very well with 3.5 to 4 oz per 10 gallons but yours may react differently.

It may also take some time, it could be 3 or 4 tanks of gas with MMO before you notice any results, or your truck may do better right away. I think MMO provides the best benefit for engines that are older and they can get the most benefits from the improved ring seal and better compression you get from MMO. And any engine can benefit from the increased lubricity in the fuel. MMO can help quiet noisy lifters and fuel injectors, but it may take time, some have reported improvements in problems like that in only 10 or 20 miles, others it takes longer. I guess it depends on the condition of your engine and fuel system and the severity of the problems. The trick with MMO is to be consistent with it. Add it at every fuel fill. I carry my MMO with me to the gas station in an old empty Regane Bottle, makes it easy to add to the tank.

I had the bad pre-ignition ping under light throttle problem with my own truck. It started around 50,000 miles I guess. I tried a lot of different remedies for it, short of pulling the heads and manually de-carbonizing. I finally used a set of Autolite 3923 plugs and a 180 degree thermostat, and the ping was gone. That was 5 years ago, and since then whenever I did a tune-up, I always used 3923's. On my last tune up I went with the stock heat range NGK plugs. Autolite has moved a lot of its manufacturing to Mexico and China and I have heard horror stories about how their quality has gone downhill pretty bad. I was worried about the ping coming back with a stock heat plug, but that was over a year ago and I still do not have any ping. I know the constant use of MMO is keeping my pistons and valves a lot cleaner now so the ping is not a problem any more. I can definitely tell a difference when I don't use MMO, I tried a test on that last year.

You might try a MMO piston soak. You can pull the plugs and squirt MMO in each cylinder, let it set a few hours or overnight, it may help free up any stuck rings you might have. If you add MMO to the oil, it may help the noise but you may need to leave it in the oil longer than 2 weeks to see any result. Keep a close eye on the oil level too, MMO will burn off fairly quickly in the crankcase. Top off with motor oil, not MMO. I have used MMO in my oil only a few times, and then only for the last 750 miles of my oil change interval, primarily as a cleaning agent. There should be no need for MMO in the oil all the time.

Jimmy

 

Quote:

You might try a MMO piston soak. You can pull the plugs and squirt MMO in each cylinder, let it set a few hours or overnight, it may help free up any stuck rings you might have. If you add MMO to the oil, it may help the noise but you may need to leave it in the oil longer than 2 weeks to see any result. Keep a close eye on the oil level too, MMO will burn off fairly quickly in the crankcase. Top off with motor oil, not MMO. I have used MMO in my oil only a few times, and then only for the last 750 miles of my oil change interval, primarily as a cleaning agent. There should be no need for MMO in the oil all the time.

I agree with Jimmy on this I did this and it freed up a ring or two on my truck

Same with any gas treatment you need to run a few tanks through the system before you feel any results.

Im not sure this is common but my truck smelled like mmo for one month after i stoped using it and I dont like the smell. UGG
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