The V8 Owners Forum -

I have just finished a full rebuild on a 3.5 engine from a Range Rover. Included all new bottom end, new cam shaft, Kent higher torque, full set of followers and pushrods, rocker shafts and rockers. Rebore etc etc. I have rebuilt several before and they have been perfect. this engine was built by a friend who was helping me out. However, it is very tappety. I see that he has fitted the pre load shims under the pedestals, not sure they needed it as the heads were only slightly skimmed. I ran the engine with the rocker covers off and I was immediately stunned by the massive oil feed running from the rocker shafts into the head, flooding the valve area and causing it to puff smoke especially when re starting a hot engine. There are no valve guide seals fitted. Anyway, as the rocker shafts are new Non OEM I cannot tell whether the shafts have been fitted correctly. Without stripping them down would there be any detrimental effect to the noise from the rocker shafts. I need to take the covers off again and check where the oil is dripping/running from in an almost constant stream. I don't recall any of my other cars producing this much oil at the top end, and whilst I have fitted an uprated pump I had done this on other engines as well. So, frankly I am at a loss as to why this is so tappety. I have heard that its possible to run the camshaft if you don't run the engine at 2000 rpm, but this was done, and in any event I would have thought that a damaged cam would produce more of a knocking noise . Could I have a faulty cam follower for instance? All ideas much appreciated as I am stuck with the prospect of stripping it all down again. Finally, I wonder whether it could be timing chain noise, did I read somewhere its possible to block off the feed to the timing chain with the woodruff key if you are not careful.

So having done some more research I have concluded it may be the Rhoads lifters I fitted with a Kent H180 cam. Can anyone confirm that these are very noisy at low revs?

The Rhodes bleed down lifters can be noisy at low rpm as they need rpm to pump up fully. However!! Oil gushing from the rockers to the point where the oil can reach overflow point with the covers off means you have way too much oil seeping out. Rockers must be loose on the shafts?

At idle you should only be seeing the odd few drips of oil from the rocker gear every few seconds while seeing a little oil seeping from all rockers.

If its gushing from the rocker gear you are starving the rest of the engine of oil?