So I had a sigh tick that turned into a horrible tapping. Pulled the heads to find damaged pushrods and rocker arms. All the damage was where the pushrod connects to the rocker arm. The lifter end was fine for the most part. I put in all new lifters, pushrods, rocker arms, gaskets, had new valve springs and seals put on and the heads resurfaced. Fired it up last night and I still have the same damn tapping! It's like the lifters won't pump up or something. The oil gallery had the worst sludge I have ever seen. I always ran Mobil 1, Valvoline, or Pennzoil full Synthetic and changed every 4000miles so I have no idea why it was so horrible. Possible head gasket leak to make the oil sludge since it used a small amount of coolant between oil changes. Any input would be great. I don't know where to go from here. I'm thinking something is preventing oil from getting to the lifters??

https://drive.google.com/folderview?...1FESHZjdkJvUUE

 

What was strange to me was that none of the lifters were collapsed and the end that rides on the cam looked fine.

 

How many damaged. One cylinder or multiple. Did you soak the lifters in oil over night? May want to stick to one brand of oil. Are you sure it's a lifter again maybe exhaust leak.

 

I don't remember how many rods and rockers were damaged for sure, but I remember it was roughly half and it wwas a mix of MDS and non MDS. I had my son crank over the motor tonight when I had the passenger side valve cover off and it appears that each and every valve is getting oil to it. I'll have to check drivers tomorrow. I did soak the lifters for 2 days in brand new oil before installing. Still very undecided about an oil choice, but leaning towards Schaeffer's since I run that in all my toys and they are always super clean. My buddy runs it in his deisel and he popped his valve covers just to check and it looked like new with 150,000 miles. Mine has 90,000. It's definitely not an exhaust leak. I have brand new manifold bolts and gaskets. this is not a tick. it's way louder than that. I was actually thinking it could possibly be a rod bearing. Thanks for the reply.

 

Took this video of the passenger side rocker arms while cranking the motor. Am I missing something? Does that appear to be the correct amount of oil getting dumped on the springs?

https://youtu.be/Q-0w-AOXsxY

 

https://youtu.be/0GiwxCGeRDA

https://youtu.be/_zOOWX8LVk0

Definitely something in the lower part of the motor. I read somewhere that some bolts cab loosen up in the flex plate near the torque converter and cause a similar sound?? Before I rebuilt the top end there was one instance where there was a super loud metal on metal noise almost like a hammer hitting an iron about 5 times fast. The rest of the time it would run fine just loud knocking that is in the videos. I dropped it off at a shop tonight. I will be very curious to see what they say.