The cam bearings were all new...the motor has less than 1000 miles on it. The CSI pump was installed on my old motor, reinstalled on this motor. The cam also came out of my old motor. The valve springs I'm using are K-Motion K800s...pretty heavy duty springs (155# closed, 450# open).

 

Can you move the crank forward and backwad any, pry on the balancer back and forth.

 

Not sure...I can check tonight if we get it up on the lift.

EDIT: Dumb question...what would that tell me if it does move back and forth (other than it has too much end play)?

 

If the end play is out of whack it can cause mystery knocks. I had this problem on mine, had a nice audible knock that was weird like yours. I looked everything over after the new crank and bearings, and could not find th real reason for the knock.

 

Well, we threw it on the lift last night and put a cat converter on it (have to pass emissions today). That quieted the engine down enough to hear things a bit better. The "knock" seems to be an exhaust leak...it looked like it had popped through my ghetto RTV gasket in one place and had black streaks around it. I'll get some new gaskets when I rebuild the exhaust system...hopefully that will shut it up.

Now, on to the "squeaking" sound...with the engine quieted down, it sounds more like something is scrubbing or rubbing something else inside the engine. We popped the oil filter off and cut it open...there was a very, very tiny bit of fine particles in the bottom that would stick to a magnet. None of them could be felt with my fingers...they were extremely small. I was told not to worry about it since it's probably just finishing up breaking in. So, nothing is broken internally (at least not yet). I do need to change the oil...the 15-50 I put in there is thinner than water (hot and cold, but especially hot). I'm going to wager that's the cause for my low oil pressure once the engine warms up. That came as a surprise...I thought Mobil 1 never thinned out (it has only been in there for about 400 miles).

So, it looks like everything is solved other than the scrubbing sound. I guess so long as it doesn't blow up, it can make whatever noises it wants. Goofy *** engine. :blah:

 

Ive seen every oil thin like that when nice and hot, a new engine also gets hotter because of more friction.

 

Cracked flywheel possibly...that sounds a lot like a bottom end noise.

If it is a tapping sound, it is most likely valvetrain/exhaust leak...is it a tap or a knock??

Any sound bytes of this??

 

It's definitely a "knock"...it sounds totally different than a lifter tapping. I can barely hear it from outside the car since the cat converter went on last night...it's much more audible from the inside. When I check the torque converter, I'll check the flexplate too to see if it's screwed up. It's a good possibility...it's stock and has 109K miles on it.

Unfortunately, I don't have any sound bites...I don't have anything to record it with.

EDIT: Just got off the phone with a buddy of mine who busted his flexplate a while back...sounds like I have the same symptoms that he does (knocking noise and vibration). Ordered a TCI flexplate, so hopefully I can throw it on this weekend and see if that fixes the problem. If not, at least I'll have a shiny new flexplate.

 

What lifters are you running with the k 800 springs?
155# closed will kill anything short of an Comp R-series lifter, also with 6" rods did you check your rod to cam clearance?
If the oil pressure is dropping from what you had I'd be worried, if it keeps going down something is definatley wrong. And a teardown/rebuild will be in order.

 

I'm using Comp R lifters. The rods clear the cam...made sure of that before everything went back together. The oil I got out of the filter last night reeked of gas and was very thin, so I'm going to dump it tonight and put some new oil in it. That should take care of the low(er) pressure.