My 1997 Ram 1500 has 214.xxx miles on it and has always had a slight lifter clank at idle. every few seconds I hear a clonk, clonk, clonk from the motor;s top end. Could this be a bad lifter? My truck isn't burning alot of oil..maybe half a quart between oil changes but when I changed out my ****ty bosch +2 plugs to regular champion copper plus The truck began idling rougher and I got a cel for misfire in cylinder 5. All of my plugs are gapped to .055 because of the accel coil, wires and cap and rotor thats on the motor. When I pulled out plug number 5 it looked as if it had been firing, but was brown with oil. So far I've replaced plug #5 with another bosch gapped at .045 because I thought it was too much gap. I cleared the computer and have driven about 65 miles with no cel. Could this be the plenum making it oily?

 

Do a compression test, and look down your throttle body, see if there is any oil down there. If you haven't done the plenum fix yet, it might be time.

 

There was only a lil oil residue in the bottom of the intake, and it wasn't black at all. I did a compression test not 2 long ago. 115+ psi in all cylinders

 

You get any smoke on cold startup? Might just be valve stem seals givin' ya some grief.

When you did the compression test, did you repeat the test wet? (put two teaspoons of oil into the cylinders, and retest.)

 

I only did the dry test, but thats I great idea for the wet test. She does blow blue smoke on startup so I went out and bought so of that bars leaks stop smoke and it fixed all smoking period. I also put in some fuel injection cleaner for the heck of it wile I was at walmart. I might just re-gap all of my plugs to .045 instead of .055 and try and index them. The motor seems like it has more power now with the copper's in there but is rougher.

 

Having all your plugs gapped the same is a very good idea.

Blue smoke at startup is valve seals. That aren't that hard to do, just time consuming.

 

a few years ago, there was some complaints about accel coils crapping out prematurely. If you still have the old coil, try it.

A "performance" coil doesn't necessarily mean you can run a bigger gap. Usually the ignition Boxes drive the coil to jump a bigger gap, and the performance coil is able to be pushed by an ignition box without crapping its pants.

 

I did check the fire of the #5 plug..trust me I shocked the crap out of myself when it arc-ed hahaha

 

Erm, your testing method leaves a bit to be desired.

I once went looking for arcing plug wires on a running engine...... once.......

 

I was grounded to the frame, and fender...It wasn't as bad as when we decided to play with a tazer.