apparently i thought it was an exhaust leak but now im pretty sure my lifter is dying or just ticking and making a bunch of noise. what are my options here? should i just buy a cam and new lifters and get a cam swap in the process or should i just switch out the lifters and go from there. i am planning on doing a cam swap down the road but that might be 6+ months down the road. any ideas or suggestions?

 

Are you sure its a lifter? Take off your intake and make sure, hydraulic roller lifters rarely go bad and are very tough. So before you start assuming make sure its not a loose rocker arm or exhaust leak.

 

Before you go replacing the lifters, try adjusting your valves first. You may just have a rocker nut that has backed off and have a rocker tapping.

If your sure that it's not exhaust and adjusting the valves doesn't fix things, then it's probably a lifter. Since your 1/3 the way there with everything off to swap lifters, I would go ahead and do the cam also. Guess it depends if you can afford the cam, springs, rockers...

 

if you do a swap buy Ls7 lifters, only about 100 dollars and they are good up to 7000rpm in the new zo6's

 

Before you go thowing parts and money away buy an automotive stethascope and find the noise. most of them have a removeable end for finding exhaust leaks and other sources of air leakes, if you find no exhaust leaks then pull the valve covers, cut a piece of cardbord to keep oil from making a mess, use the metal rod on your scope on each rocker stud.if one is louder than the rest check ajustment and go from there.

 

As stated above i would try readjusting the valves first and seeing if that solves the problem, if it doesnt then you might as well do a cam swap since you will have the intake manifold and you are half way there to it. Look into buying some caddy racing lifters from gmpartsdirect for $100

 

what would a dead lifter look like? also, theres no drop in performance, just a ticking noise, the car runs just as strong as it always has.

 

It could be a sticking valve. I just pulled my heads and could see a tar-like substance in the valve guide that must have leaked past the seal. It was giving me a ticking sound. Especially at low RPMs. It wasn't very Loud, but noticeable.

 

makes me wonder if i could seafoam it again, but that probably wouldnt work. i dont really want to tear into the motor yet, i dont have the money to start rebuilding parts just yet.

 

It may be worth a try. The amount in my guide was very small and smeared to about the size of a dime. But it looked and felt significant enough to cause the valve to stick.

 

FYI, you'll need new pushrods if you do this, the cup in the LS7 lifters is considerably shallower than the stockers.

 

Stock lifters will work just fine. If that is your problem.

 

yea for some motors you will, but with my set-up I had to check for length anyways and ended up needing 7.150's