The ultimate tappet thread

[Diamond Hell]

Ben, have you tried presenting the car to a real garage, to see what their response is when presented with it?

It may be that this collection of internet numpties (which is what we are) might not have got the problem correctly diagnosed.

Annoying, but stranger things have happened at sea.

[sidecarphil]

it is posable to get low oil pressure in the head

if one of the oil gallerys is blocked then yes

but the gallery could be blocked in either the block or the head

one of my XR3i's (yeah i know sorry) had this problem after i added some oil system cleaner before i removed the oil

it dislodged some carbon and that got jammed in an oil way , i did what you did but it still tapped so i took the head off and pressure cleaned but it still tapped

so i used it as a doner car for another dagenham dustbin

[danny_p]

chould be running knackerd tappets for 2 years has knackerd the cam.

or camshaft bearings have worn causeing low oil pressure

[Ben Lessani]

Ben, have you tried presenting the car to a real garage, to see what their response is when presented with it?

Not yet, as there's no garages in Manchester that I know of that are reccomended. Closest was GolfNutz - but last I heard, they've closed down.

I'm not sure if this would affect it, but I still haven't replaced the rocker cover gasket, GSF were out of them, so I'm getting a new one on Monday. My current one is a little mishapen (not brittle/broke), along with this, my oil filler cap broke the other day and it seperated, I clicked it back together, but one of the pins snapped.

These two are getting replaced on Monday, but I'm wondering if they could be contributory?

As it ran for about 10 mins completely silent, I would be under the impression that the pre-primed lifters were doing their job, and we're sat at full extension? Then without sufficient oil flow/pressure, the hydraullic lock stopped and they compressed down?

I've got 20l of fresh oil in the garage and I don't mind doing an oil change again, or even running flushing oil through if its possibly a blocked channel issue.

Is there any way I can measure the cam lobes to see if they have been worn, same applies to the cam bearings?

Also, just to confirm, I torqued the cam bearing caps to 20nm - this is definately correct?

[danny_p]

20 Nm is correct.

you can measure the cam bearings with plstigauge  but TBH you can tell by looking at them,   don't have to take the cam out ether,   just pop a cap off,  if see a patch that looks a bit brass like in colour thats the because it's the base showing through the white metal and it's all used up.
streeks showing mean pritty much the same thing, on higher mialage engines there will allways be scratches in the cam bearings  normaly inline with the oil holes,  they can be ignored as they do that,  but goudges not.

with cams   you can normaly tell by looking at the surface  the colour should be even,  oil tanned patches is bad,   measureing is best way to tell tho,  it can be just about done with a good vernier,   measure the base circle , then measure the hight of cam,  left and right side of each lobe.   and compare.

normaly only one or two lobes go

 

[Ben Lessani]

The cam bearings were in good nick, no signs of scoring or wear. However I can still check the height of the lobe(s). Although the cam is fitted, I should be able to rotate it enough to check each one at a time.

Funny thing was, just before I went out today (in a different car), I started mine up and there was no tappet noise whatsoever. I'm going for a drive again later today to see what happens. I am so confused

[paultownsend]

awesome gti?

[Ben Lessani]

Soooo, I appear to be having the reverse of almost everyone else on here.

When I start up from cold - the tappets are silent, the more the oil temp increases, the noisier the tappets get. When the oil hits 90 degs, they are as noisy as the old set.

Cold engine - Tappets silent
Warm engine - Tappets noisy

What could be causing this, obviously not a worn cam/bearings.

[Khare]

could be that not enough oil is getting to the head. As DPB said with a airplane engine, id give the car an oil and filter change, as there could be bits of old tappets stuck in there, and do an engine flush too, i used wynns and it worked a treat.

[sidecarphil]

yeah or engine flush could make it worse 

as my earlier post !!