I have a 92 NA that I've had for about a year. It's all stock, except for an exhaust, and it has 142k miles. Recently I had been hearing valves ticking when I would turn it on in the morning, but it would quickly go away after a few seconds.
Today, after installing the stock hearder and cat, stupid CA smog laws, the car would not turn on. It would just crank over continuously but nothing. After disconnecting/reconnecting the Air Flow Sensor plug, it started up, but with the valves ticking noise.
This time, the noise didn't go away and it's still there. Drove it around the block and still ticking. What should I do? I change the oil on the car every 3k miles and it has just recently been changed. I only use the car to go to/from work so it doesn't get driven too many miles.
Essentially the lifters get get clogged over time and cant receive oil fast enough hence the tick. Think of them like a clogged heart. You can temporarily reduce the symptoms with 3qts atf 1 heavy qt oil. Let run for a while. Flush and follow with a standard oil change. It worked for a bit on mine but it will come back. Some folks have also tried cleaning with a kerosene flush.
I used to run a little atf right before an oil change and it helped keep the ticking down till the next one. I have since switched to mobil 1 full synthetic 5w-30 (from 5w-20) and the ticking is almost non-existent.
Hmmm...thanks for all the info. I'm currently running 10w40 Rotella T. Should I switched to a full synthetic oil? What is ATF? I've heard some people putting some oil additive as well and that fixes the issue.
automatic trans fluid. run 5w30 synthetic motor oil in the winter.... but yeah the ticking is just the nature of an old hydraulic lifter, nothing really wrong with it... i believe mazda swithed to solid lifters on the nb because of customer complaints.
Holy crap dude 10w-40? It's winter now so you should be doing a lot less, i don't even run past 10-30 in the summer here and it gets over 110 degrees. First thing is try lower weight oil. I run 5w30 in winter and 10w30 in summer and only ticking is normal start up. Closer to oil change point it will get more pronounced. Thats normal.
basically what everyone said^^^it is sending oil up but doesn't get there in time causing the clicking then it goes away as soon as the oil reaches it, i'd do the seafoam thing and then run full synthetic i suppose.
Almost all 1.6s will have the HLA tick some are just more severe than others. Theres also like a billion threads on this.
I used the zmax engine treatment maybe 1,000 miles after my last oil change. It really helped diminish it. I think basically it comes down to any sort of way to clean it; whether that be seafoam, oil treatments, or an ATF fluid rinse will help out your issue.
I'll try some of the things and go down to 30 weight oil and a new better oil filter. The thing that is weird is that the noise was not there until after I tried to start the engine for multiple times without starting. Once it started up, the noise was there and didn't go away.
How much are new lifters? About how many miles was this heard in this cars? Did the noise start up even when the car was new or did it start happening later in life of the car? How hard is it to replace the valve step seals and is it necessary?
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