X2 on looking for an exhaust leak. Check the easy stuff first.

 

Oh yeah, right after buying mine, it had a bad exhaust leak at the passenger's side y pipe flange. That turned out to be the metal gasket there had burned thru in the middle and you could feel the leak by holding your hand near the junction with the engine running. Changed the gaskets on both sides. Problem resolved.

 

I have the same problem Danny. Why I did not think to get new gaskets when changing out the head gasket is beyond me. Plan on doing those the same time as the kick down cable.

Now where is that video?

 

Sorry about the delay!

I've been wrestling with the video, so to recap in boring text format:

I pulled the driver's side valve cover. This required removing the plenum, part of the air intake, and a couple plugs. Then I replaced the plenum and with a sense of anticipation had my mom fire the car up while I watched the now exposed rocker arm assy. Lo and behold, oil did not fly everywhere, the car did not explode etc. The ticking was louder, but I still could not isolate it down to one particular rocker. Pretty fun to watch the valves do their hurky-jerky dance.

Everything looked good from there so I turned the car off, removed the plenum again, and pulled the rocker arm assembly. Very carefully, using the 'shoebox method', I pulled all of the push rods.

Now, I sat down with the rocker assy and the push rods and a set of calipers and went over everything very carefully. None of the rods seemed exceptionally worn. None of the rockers seemed exceptionally warn. In fact, everything seemed like it was in pretty good shape. So I shined a flashlight down into the engine and looked at what I could see of the tappets. Then I carefully inserted a push rod into every tappet in turn, and spun it, to see if there were any rough edges or resistance, or anything unusual.

Nothing.

Okay, back to the rocker arm assembly. I had tried to clean this thing off when I did the head gaskets, but it was still pretty gunky. I noticed that there were a number of holes in the assembly that looked like they might be oil passages (anybody know what these things are? about 3/32 diameter?) These were clogged solid with oil gunk.

Okay, it's getting dark. I happen to have a gallon of industrial degreaser and I plunk the whole assembly down into a bucket of the stuff and leave it overnight. The next morning, I come back up, the gunk has sloughed off, and I clean the whole thing the best I can: using compressed air I blow all of the holes out, get into everything I can with a brass brush etc.

Once all that is done, I put it back together (very carefully replacing push rods in correct order using the above mentioned 'shoebox' method). Reinstall plenum.

Of course, I forget the two nuts that hold the fuel injection wires in place, and so have to the remove and reinstall the plenum a couple of more times.

(note: by far the most useful tool i have at this point is a Makita impact driver with an adaptor that lets me use my 1/4" socket set, and an 18" flexible driver extension. This speeds up the process of spinning off most of these bolts by a factor of, oh, say, 10).

(note 2: it was miserable trying to slide the valve cover back on with all of the criss crossing wires, breather hoses, oil lines etc above it, but it is possible)

(note 3: at this point, I am fed up to the gills with the stupid '12 point 8mm deep socket required' bolts that hold the valve covers on so I permanently replace them with some stainless steel button head socket screws, which work about 1000x better. Take that Land Rover engineers!)

Okay, everything back together again, I fire up the engine.

Ticking gone.

Vibration in gas pedal which developed after head gasket job, gone.

Runs perfect.

Thank god.

Well, that was my experience, and a useful lesson that not every ticking noise from your valve train area requires the tappets to be replaced, a new camshaft etc. I'm pretty sure that while doing the heads, some sludge got crammed in some oil passages, and the lack of lubrication was leading to the ticking noises.

Of course, seeing as how I'm not even sure the holes were oil passages in the first place, this is basically me talking out my a$$.

But it worked.

Best,

Tor

 

I would suggest changing your oil and filter now to get the oil additive out of the engine.

 

I have fixed many cars by taking the part in question apart and cleaning it up and reinstalling it. Amazing how the simple things work. Having a heat tank at my work is definitely a benefit as when I had my heads off I was able to clean them up.

My question is, what should you reassemble the rocker arm connecting points with? Is there a special grease or just oil?