The V8 Owners Forum -

As part of the rebuild:
1. Are all the valves ground / installed to the same height?
2. Did you check the preload in the hydraulic tappets?

You may well have a rattly tappet if for example one valve seat was not cut as much as the rest.

You can check by removing the rocker shafts and placing a straight edge across the valve stems.

I have had a machine shop cock this up before. They assumed that the valve clearances could be adjusted individually, which isn't the case.

Chris.

Don't the hydraulic tappets self adjust over a certain range?

They do. I think they are 20thou to 60 thou preload, so +/- 0.5mm. That's not a lot of variation on a carelessly set of valves.

Chris.

Only thing is...... I can't make the You Tube linky work. Tried pasting URL between Img brackets but doesn't work.




AHa! success! It's not an image!

And another which sounds worse than it does when standing by the car.

Is there by any chance a dual-row timing chain in there? At a guess, it sounds like one is rubbing on the inside of the timing cover. It seems too rattly to be lifters.

I think there might be a dual chain timing chain - it is a long time since I rebuilt it. I put the stethoscope against the timing cover and there wasn’t much sign of the noise but I shall have another listen and see what I find.

I do remember being a little concerned about the camshaft and what held it in place, so your guess sounds quite possible.

Thanks for that.

Oh dear, you make notes when you rebuild an engine, just like I did . . . except, er, I've lost them!

If you remove the distributor you'll see what's in there, and if you didn't do some grinding on the inside of the timing cover then the wider chain will grind away quite happily. Of course it's more mucking about, but it should be worth it.

I see from the invoice from Turner Engineering, from whom I bought the engine parts I needed, that the timing chain is part number ERC 7929 and is described as "Timing Chain - Floppy". So, when I came to rebuild the engine and the timing chain didn't seem to be very tight, I assumed that was because it was described as Floppy. The Camshaft Chainwheel that I also replaced made no mention of being double - part number 610289.

I am now pretty sure that it is a single timing chain but it could still be where the noise is coming from if I have assembled it incorrectly. I can't get to my workshop for a while unfortunately, so it will have to wait.

Edit: just looked on Turner's website and not sure if ERC 7929 is single or double. I do know it was the same as the one I removed.

It should be a standard one, then. I don't think Turner sold much that wasn't.

The noise wasn't coming from the top of the engine at all, but once I had slowed the revs down to a sensible tickover I found the culprit was the timing pointer was loose and rubbing on the crank shaft pulley.

I had the revs up to run in the camshaft which I did successfully and it was whilst doing this that the noise started as the pointer slowly slid down to just touch the pulley wheel.

Not sure where the pointer should be positioned now.

So the noise problem is solved?

You can find TDC easily enough through the #1 spark plug hole and set up the pointer from there.

Davo wrote: ↑

Tue May 15, 2018 3:56 am

So the noise problem is solved?

You can find TDC easily enough through the #1 spark plug hole and set up the pointer from there.

Of course! Why didn't i think of that? Thanks.

And yes, it runs really quietly now.

Result!