I took my car for a spin around the block and I made a couple of WOT runs. The first one there was no problems. After I made the second WOT run I noticed a loud ticking noise. Sounded like it was coming from the RH side of the engine. My first thought; it's an exhaust leak. I'm not so sure that it is. I haven't had much time to diagnose the problem but I have pulled the valve cover to see if there was anything wrong and nothing stood out. I'm really hoping it's just an exhaust leak but I'm having hard time finding it if that's it. What are symtoms of a bent rod or lifter? I've taken it out for a short drive since the noise first occured and it still runs strong but the noise is still there. It doesn't seem to be any worse and it gets quieter at higher RPM's. Any ideas? I also do not smell coolant or oil in the exhaust.

Thanks,
Dave

 

If your lucky its an exhaust leak or a loose rocker.
I rod or burned bearing would make a "knocking" noise.

Ticking is always better than knocking.

 

Get yourself a nice long blade screwdriver and use it to listen to your engine. An ear on the handel end and the tip on your right valve cover, you can hear alot. You can also use the left valve cover as a reference to what things should sound like on the right. If you have a rocker loose, lifter not pumping up you'll hear it through the screwdriver (big time) in sync with with the tapping you hear through your other ear. If you don't hear anything really noticable, chances are good it's a blown header gasket.

 

An exhaust leak will be louder when the engine is under load and quieter when you back off the throttle.

Use ricehammer's screwdriver trick (it works really well) and see if you can localize where the noise is coming from.

 

Also if it is an exhaust leak it will be prominent in the morning on first startup when motor is cold.

 

Same thing happened to me, once upon a time. Turned out that the lifter retaining spider thing failed on #3 cylinder, allowing the lifters to jump up and rotate so they came back down with the roller wheels sliding sideways on the cam .

 

Mine was making a funny noise after I took it out for some power passes, actually started making a noise halfway through the last pass I did and it turned out that I spun a rod bearing and when I took the motor apart I also had 2 broken top rings.

I hope you didn't hurt anything as bad as I did, but its a possibility. Let us know what you figure out

 

I had a similiar problem, after making some WOT passes, turned out one of the lifters had worn a flat spot on the roller...thank goodness that was the only damage...replaced the whole set just in case.

Hope it's just an exhaust leak for yea atleast that would be an easy fix.

 

I have only put on about 3000 miles on the car since the cam, chain, lifters, pushrod and rocker swap. Could they possibly be worn out this soon?

 

I doubt it unless you installed the parts incorrectly, or they were possibly faulty.

I hope its not something serious like I mentioned before, but you can't overlook the possibility that it might have happened.

Did you upgrade the valve springs? You may have stressed the springs and one may have broken, that would be a quick thing that you can check just by pulling off the valve covers

A guy I know took his LS1 car out for a few hard runs the other night and right before it shifted into 3rd gear he heard a pop out the exhaust and lost all power and have to have the car towed home. Now it will start but he has a loud ticking noise but I haven't had a chance to look at it yet. If I find out anything on that car I'll let you know, I know its an LS1 but basically the samething happened