dtmpower

So i decided to do a tune up on my 87 turbo and replaced all the wires,plugs, rotor, cap and did an oil change. After all this was done i started it up and holy crap I hear a loud tap. My engine burns some oil so when I did the oil change 2.5-3 qrts were missing. The previous owner said to do the oil change around 181k which I just hit. Are my valves bent??..or is my engine trashed??..please need help ASAP..thanks in advance.

Video

http://imageshack.us/clip/my-videos/52/zwx.mp4/

tonsoffun300zx

damn that sucks dude maybe your lifters have gone out, or maybe a bad valve idk wait for someone else who knows more. but it has suffecient oil right now?

dtmpower

Yes it has 6qts of 20w50...I put some thick oil thinking maybe that would solve the issue but to avail. I posted on another forum and some one said to add ATF to the oil and run it for about 150 miles and change the oil again. He said the detergents in the ATF would break down the sludge covering the lifter that is bad. I guess im taking the bus for now until I get this thing figured out.

tonsoffun300zx

atf is a good detergent it dosen't mix with motor oil and does clean pretty well. atleast it's better than water(hoov100 decided it would be smart to run water instead of oil to clean out a sbc in his 240z it died!)

hoov100

I have no idea why you have 6 quarts of oil when your car only takes three. Also how loud is the tap? does it increase with engine RPM? lifter tick is pretty normal for a z31.

Keep your retarded BS off topic comments to the lounge.

rdunn12

so you changed the spark plugs now you have a tapping noise,did you clean around the plugs with compressed air before taking them out??

rdunn12

I just listened to your video,sounds to me like debris is in a cylinder!

rdunn12

I have had this happen to me in the past,if it is a piece of plastic or road debris and I feel confident I know what it is,I take it out on the interstate and let it loose,eventually it will pass it into the exhaust system.If it is a small piece of metal it could do damage,but it usually is'nt.

dtmpower

**** man..I reeallly hope its not anything in the cylinder..that would suck. so our engines only take 3qts of oil????...I thought it was 6...

hoov100

Next time don't think, know.


After hearing the video it sounds more like a rod knock at 1500RPM's, as you move the camera from side to side, notice that the noise doesn't get louder or softer?

hoov100

If anything besides a small amount of liquid or gas gets into the cylinder I would be worried about scoring on the cylinder walls from it getting lodged between the piston and cylinder wall, or having it get caught on the valve seat when the valve closes. Also he would have to worry about that piece of debris ****ing up the turbo.

JSM

Are you 100% sure you put the plug wires on right?

AZ-ZBum

Z31 VG30E and VG30ET motors take 4 quarts. Not 3 not 6. 4.

And why are you using such a thick oil? 10W40 is all I've ever used and have not had issues.

dtmpower

its got a lot of miles on it..so when I 1st heard the tap I thought it was a lifter going bad so i used a thicker oil..but now its still there so at this point I have no clue what to do...Should I tear down the engine or should I be looking for a new one??

AZ-ZBum

Damn. Just watched the video. I don't think that's lifter tap. I think you dropped something in the cylinder when you did the plugs. That's a horrible sound.

dtmpower

If I did drop something in there..how can I get it out with out tearing apart the head??...I could use any thing right about now..

tonsoffun300zx

try taking the sparkplugs out and hand turn the crank till each cylinder is at the top of its stroke and they just look inside each cylinder with a flashlight.

hoov100

Rent or buy a lighted bore scope and see if you can find anything in the cylinder. Or just get a high powered flashlight and look into the cylinder to see if you can see any damage or debris.

Or before we start jumping on the parroting circle jerk bandwagon, how about we see how clean the area around the spark plugs are?

Also the problem with it being something in the cylinder is from the video, no matter where the camera went, it could not isolate the noise to a specific side/area, which is why I believe it is something in the bottom end. Try taking a couple quarts out of oil out and see what happens.

As for taking it out, that depends. a very long pair of SKINNY needle nose pliers would work assuming it's just one large piece and you can get it in the center. If you can't then your pretty much ****ed...

dtmpower

well i fixed it. Just so happened to be a bad lifter and I took the car to our family mechanic and he said its deff. a lifter and told me to add "gunk valve medic" in to the crank case. I did and while I was driving home I accelerated up to boost an immediately the tap went away. Drove around for about 20 miles and now its back to normal with no ticking or tapping. Thank you for all of your help.

this is the stuff I used:

tonsoffun300zx

damn good stuff congrats!

dtmpower

Thanks man..I was soo relieved when it went away...this thread should be a sticky!!!

tonsoffun300zx

imma try that stuff in my car if i can find it (on my 75 nova)

dtmpower

pepboys has it for about $5....best $5 ive ever spent.

AZ-ZBum

I've never been a fan of snake oil. I have a feeling it's just covering up a larger problem. But who knows. You could be just fine now. I'm curious as to why this started after the oil change. It wasn't there prior, right?

tonsoffun300zx

you can actually rebuild the lifter but all that does is clean it out similar to what the snake oil did just probably not as good but if it fixed the problem then thats good.