Hello Merry Christmas. My questions below are from a fully disclosed, curious learner, rookie.
My 2011 Suburban with 208k miles recently sounded as if a lifter failed. Upon taking it apart, I confirmed the #4 lifter had failed. I bought a kit to replace all lifters. While apart I had the heads milled and valves pressure/vacuum tested. Tests were good. Heads were milled down .008". I reassembled everything, new head gaskets and bolts. I followed the torque head torque sequence. Upon start I had a tick in the engine. When I put the engine back together, I did not realize I had to adjust the valves. I just put the rods in, installed the rockers and guide and torqued each to 22 ft-lbs where they landed. After the tick, I researched the tick and realized I should pre-load the lifters. So, my first step to resolve the tick was a valve adjustment using EOIC. I started the Suburban and the tick was worse. I noticed an exhaust smell and sure enough found that some of my exhaust manifold bolts were not tight. I torqued to spec, 11 ft-lb on pass 1 and 15 ft-lb on second pass. Smell went away. The tick still was still there. I researched EOIC again and realized I was wrong when I torqued the intake. I reperformed the procedure.
I ran the procedure like this starting with the driver side head:
1. First my point of reference, going from front of the engine to the rear (firewall) the rockers are 1 Intake, 1 Exhaust, 3 I, 3 E, 5 then 7. On the passenger side going from front to rear (firewall) the rockers are 2 Exhaust, 2 Intake, 4, 6, 8 like that correct?
2. So following that reference starting with cylinder 1, when I rotated the crank, as the exhaust barely began to open as indicated by the push rod rising, I torqued the respective intake. Then I continued turning the crank until just before the intake closed. I then torqued the exhaust. I determined the intake was almost closed by touching the I and E rockers with my fingers and roughly measuring height.
3. I did this one cylinder at a time, down the driver side, then down the passenger side finishing with cylinder 8.
Upon restart, it sounded about the same still to loud. It is a metal ticking, I feel pretty certain. When I give the engine gas the ticking gets faster not louder. It is consistent from startup to a warm engine. The strange thing to me and my first question is, the ticking sound is louder now than when I just put the push rods in and torqued them where they landed. So, for a stock cam with stock push rods and new lifters, what is the procedure to torque the rockers. I am going to wait until the weekend before I retry again but instead of using the EOIC method I was going to try the TDC method. That seems to be the recommended method for stock engines. Thank you in advance for your guidance.
My 2011 Suburban with 208k miles recently sounded as if a lifter failed. Upon taking it apart, I confirmed the #4 lifter had failed. I bought a kit to replace all lifters. While apart I had the heads milled and valves pressure/vacuum tested. Tests were good. Heads were milled down .008". I reassembled everything, new head gaskets and bolts. I followed the torque head torque sequence. Upon start I had a tick in the engine. When I put the engine back together, I did not realize I had to adjust the valves. I just put the rods in, installed the rockers and guide and torqued each to 22 ft-lbs where they landed. After the tick, I researched the tick and realized I should pre-load the lifters. So, my first step to resolve the tick was a valve adjustment using EOIC. I started the Suburban and the tick was worse. I noticed an exhaust smell and sure enough found that some of my exhaust manifold bolts were not tight. I torqued to spec, 11 ft-lb on pass 1 and 15 ft-lb on second pass. Smell went away. The tick still was still there. I researched EOIC again and realized I was wrong when I torqued the intake. I reperformed the procedure.
I ran the procedure like this starting with the driver side head:
1. First my point of reference, going from front of the engine to the rear (firewall) the rockers are 1 Intake, 1 Exhaust, 3 I, 3 E, 5 then 7. On the passenger side going from front to rear (firewall) the rockers are 2 Exhaust, 2 Intake, 4, 6, 8 like that correct?
2. So following that reference starting with cylinder 1, when I rotated the crank, as the exhaust barely began to open as indicated by the push rod rising, I torqued the respective intake. Then I continued turning the crank until just before the intake closed. I then torqued the exhaust. I determined the intake was almost closed by touching the I and E rockers with my fingers and roughly measuring height.
3. I did this one cylinder at a time, down the driver side, then down the passenger side finishing with cylinder 8.
Upon restart, it sounded about the same still to loud. It is a metal ticking, I feel pretty certain. When I give the engine gas the ticking gets faster not louder. It is consistent from startup to a warm engine. The strange thing to me and my first question is, the ticking sound is louder now than when I just put the push rods in and torqued them where they landed. So, for a stock cam with stock push rods and new lifters, what is the procedure to torque the rockers. I am going to wait until the weekend before I retry again but instead of using the EOIC method I was going to try the TDC method. That seems to be the recommended method for stock engines. Thank you in advance for your guidance.