Purchased 05' Dakota in 2011 with 56k miles and it had the famous tick/knock but would go away after 30 sec. So now it has 120k miles and takes 30-90 seconds to quite down. Then I decide to replace all lifters and complete timing chain set. Used Mellings and Cloyes parts. In my particular engine all the lifters were stuck/frozen as if a solid lifter. The rockers and rollers wheels all looked great with the small oil holes. Both chain tensioners were fully extended with a lot of play on the drivers side chain. The wear on the chain plastic guides was barley visible but very brittle as I broke parts of the plastic guides when removing and had to go chasing plastic bits inside the engine. The inside of motor had the typical 'honey glaze' look no sludge -- changed oil every 3k miles. Well the fix lasted about 4 days, during that time every 1st start of the day the engine sounded the great, no ticks, knock,clatter -- nothing. On the 5th day the motor sounded actually worse, it has more of a knock sound now but no ticks -- but goes away between 30 & 90 secs. What the hell !, what changed?. If it was an oil pump, bad bearing, bad valve seat, a manifold leak why was the engine quite for 4 days ?. Any part that was defective before repair (except lifters and chain set) should be defective after repair including the first 4 days. I got 4 days of a very quite motor and then "Boom" . Any Thoughts ???

 

Do you have any codes? Misfire codes? Knocking is combustion and could be that your timing is off, and that after a couple starts to break in the timing chains they stretched a bit and threw your timing off. You sure that the chains were placed correctly. Also did you think about replacing the valve springs. If you are going back in there you might want to just buy some springs and replace them since you replaced the lifters.

 

No codes, no check engine light . The motor sounds good after 60 sec. warm up. Had my son looking over my shoulder to verify the timing chain set install. The last step in the overhaul manual says to rotate the crankshaft 2 times to verify no valve to piston contact. That part went as the manual stated and the timing marks on the gears were at the correct clock position. Never thought about the valve springs and I guess it's not impossible that one of the new lifters might have failed. So maybe when temp gets warmer I would like to at the very least pull the valve covers and look around. Bugs the heck out me that it sounds at bit worse on start up than before. The most puzzling thing is the 4 days of no noise from the engine -- man I thought I had it fixed, pretty disappointing to say the least.