98 Q HLA Lifter Removal WITHOUT pulling cams!!

[tfvesquire]

Okay all, I have taken on another risky endeavor to solve my partially clogged lifter(s) on my 98 Q. I have posted a lot on this issue and my partial successes and failures on trying to clean my lifters in the engine without having to resort to pulling the cams and potentially messing up the timing or disrupting something inside the timing cases. This weekend, I studied the HLAs on the passenger side and decided the upper cam is most likely the culprit of the ticking because the lower is usually submerged in an oil bath. I diagnosed the ticking from the front of the engine to almost the middle and decided to try pulling the first four to six lifters.

AS WITH MANY OF MY DIY REPAIRS I POSTED ON THIS SITE, YOU CAN TRY THIS METHOD AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!

After ticking the engine starter a few times to align the cam lobes on the flat parts and not compressing the first two lifters I used two long flat blade screwdrivers (both covered with a soft, clean rag over the tips, to carefully lift the rocker off the tip of the lifter. It will have a tendency to lift and scoot backward due to the valve spring pressure. As you lift the rocker "keeper" up over the tip of the lifter with one hand, carefully place the other screwdriver next to the rocker and move it over until it literally "POPS" free. That is the easy part!!! Getting it back in place takes some real attention. Now, you can use a pair of pliers with the tips covered by a rag to prevent scouring or scraping the polished lifter tips and pull each lifter straight up and out.

Now that you have removed the first lifter, take a look at the the jacket and note the assembly is not held together with a C clip, but instead is held together with a thin metal cover that is peened in place. I did not want to try removing that cover so I could break down the entire lifter into its parts, so instead, I placed the lifter in the vise with rags protecting both ends and carefully compressed the lifter slowly to release all the old oil and any sludge inside. After the old oil came out I was able to compress the lifter slightly using my fingers. I made up a cleaning bath using Chemtool in a cup and submerged the lifter in the solution while compressing it to release the air. I then put the lifter back in the vise to remove the solution and then submerged it into a bath of new engine oil and compressed it until there was firm tension. Now comes the fun part, reinstallation..........

This is perhaps the most critical part and most challenging repair I have done on my car since I did not have to remove the cams or heads to do it. The trick is to get the rocker assemblies back on in the correctly seated position. That is why you want to do one at a time so you don't mess up which rocker goes on which lifter. To resinstall each rocker, place the flat end of the keeper onto the top of the valve tip and have your long, screwdriver handy(I used a long Craftsman flat blade that has a 1/2" blade and 15 inch long handle) and a 3/8" extension (I used one that is 12 inches for leverage) While holding the rocker in place with the flat part resting on the valve, take the 3/8" extension and find a strong leverage point in the head and carefully pry/lift the tip that sits over the lifter up and over so it can clear the tip of the lifter. While you have the rocker assembly pulled up, take the long handled screwdiver and carefully coax the rocker over the tip of the lifter. MAKE SURE YOUR WORK AREA IS CLEAN AND YOU USE CLAEN RAGS!!! YOU DON'T WANT TO GET ANY DIRT OR TRASH IN THE VALVETRAIN ASSEMBLY!!! Most likely, this will take you several tries to do so don't get frustrated and make sure you cover the tips of both tools with a rag to prevent any scraping. Once you get the rocker over the tip of the lifter, it will have a tendency to slip backwards toward the valve. Don't be alarmed since the valve prevents the rocker from moving any futher back. Next, use a smaller flat blade screwdriver covered with a rag to insert into the opening on the rocker just behind the part that goes over the tip of the lifter. Carefully work the rocker forward until it pops back in palce over the tip of the lifter.

Now, you can decide just how many lifters you want to attempt to remove. Just keep in mind you will have to rotate the engine either by hand or by ticking the starter a few times to rotate the cams and release the lifters from the cam lobes. If you try and reinstall a lifter with the lob pointing down on the lifter, there will be no way to insert the rocker back in place and compress the valve spring. To do this job, you need to use the rocker assembly as a lever to compress the valve spring. The valve spring is way too strong for you to attempt to compress it with a screwdiver and I doubt you will have enough room to put a lifter spring compressor in the same area the rocker assembly needs to go.

The lifter ticking was only present for the first few seconds upon start up for the lifters to prime themselves up again. I am going to do one more engine flush using Amsoil and then switch back to Amosil full synthetic and hopefully my ticking is gone forever. Right now, I have high mileage oil that with the added detergent cured some of the major ticking, but it kept returning. I don't have a photos since I was just happy I got everything back together and running properly after the first rocker flew off and I asked myself what the h*ll was I getting myself into. I thought about simply replacing the lifters with brand new one since they are not easy to disassemble without running the risk of me not reattching the top cover properly and running the risk of having the lifter come apart while the engine was running. I did not research the risks of installing brand new lifters on a set of cams with over 100K miles on them.

All of the searches I did suggested these lifters could be taken completely apart by removing a C clip and then slding the pieces apart to remove the check ball and spring inside. I am here to tell you this is not the case. There may be someone else out there who is brave enough to do this repair and carefully disassemble the entire lifter to properly clean i inside, but I am not that brave. I'm sure disassembling the lifters would result in a more thorough cleaning, but once again, I was able to force out most of the old crud inside the few lifters I removed and them pumped them up with fresh oil.

I will post my final results, but I feel confident having gotten this far.

Take care.

Ted

[Q451990]

Very interesting! I hope it cures your ticking issues!

Heath

[tfvesquire]

**UPDATE**

Well, several months have passed since I tried to clean the passenger side head lifters to cure my ticking issues. As I posted above, I did not want to attempt to disassemble the lifters once I removed them from their postion under the rocker arms. The fact that the top "keepers" were peened on to keep them in place meant I did not want to run the risk of bending the metal jacket to remove the check ball and spring to thoroughly clean the insides. Instead, I soaked the first 6 lifters (closest to the radiator) in carb cleaner and tried to clean them up the best I could. After doing so, I still have some residual ticking that came and went like clockwork, just like before. I decided to run two cans of Amsoil engine flush for one last cleaning attempt before putting in expensive Amsoil OE full synthetic 10w30.

Unfortunately, despite another flush and the use of arguably the best oil out there, I still have the f*cking tikcing that makes me want to drive my car into a tree and leave the keys. At this point, I can honestly say there is no fix for this problem except for 2 options: 1. remove the lifters and unpeen the top keeper to disassemble the entire lifter and soak everything in a carb cleaning bath overnight and then hope you are able to put everything back together, peen the jacket back in palce and hope to goodness it doesn't fly apart once installed and the engine is run. Or 2. get a cylinder head from a lower mileage 97-01 Q and pull the lower rear (toward the windshield) lifters that are fully submerged in oil and install those in place of my defective lifters. I don't want to start buying a new set of lifters or I may run inot other issues.

I am going with option #2 since I cannot stand my car sounding like a piece of sh*t everytime I pull up to a light. If there is anyone on the forum who has a blown engine or are parting out a Q that is willing to sell me just the 16 lifters from one of their cylinder heads shipped to Chicago, please contact me. The cheapest I found a cylinder head on Ebay was $149 shipped, but I only need the lifters, so shipping should be way cheaper than shipping an entire head,

You can reach me at [email protected].

Thanks and hopefully I hear from someone on here soon. Can't stand the ticking anymore!!!

Ted

[OwnerCS]

How many miles does you car have on it and which side is ticking?

[tfvesquire]

To answer your question, it is the passenger side towards the front of the car, approx 109k miles. The ticking started getting really bad a few years ago at about 90K miles to the point where I posted an entire write up on it. I ended up buying a passenger side head from a car with only 75K miles on it, pulled out the lifters and soaked them overnight in a Chemtool bath. Then, began pulling out the lifters on my passenger side one at a time starting from the front. As I removed the first lifter, I did notice the oil feed hole underneath the upper 1st lifter was completely clogged. Using a paperclip and squirts of carb cleaner, I carefully cleaned out the clog and primed up a newer lifter from the salvagte head and moved on to the next one. The lower 1st lifter oil feed hole was not clogged, so I installed another newer lifter. However, on the upper 2nd lifter fed oil, the same thing -- completely clogged. I could see a pattern growing here. I went ahead and cleaned out the next 4 upper lifter feed holes and they became less and less clogged.

The first 5 were literally completely clogged with crud. I mean, nothing could have gotten thru there since I had to work a paperclip a little at a time just to poke thru it. I assumed that after cleaning them out, the lifters would now get a full prime of oil from the pump. It definitely was better after doing all that and putting everything back together, but it still did not completely solve my ticking. I am currently running a mixture of Amsoil 10w30 and a can of CRC engine treatment that seems to be slowly cleaning any residual varnish/crud as I drive. I have put about 60 miles on the car so far and each time I take it for a highway trip, the ticking intervals get less frequent. I'm sure there is still some crud in the last two upper lifter feed holes on the passenger side, but I did not feel like removing them after bending over my fender for several hours. I can say from experience, make sure you do not buy a car with overextended oil changes and /or an engine overheathed at some point because once this varnish is created, it is a b**** to remove. I thought I purchased a car with a full maintenance history, but asI found out the hard way, those can be deceiving. Hopefully, my engine will eventually recover and become as quiet as it should sound. I am now in the market for a 2003-2004 M45 since I love the styling. I also love the fact that there is only one other pearl white Q45 in the area like mine. I guess that is what keeps me trying to maintain what I have.

Until the next major revelation, take care of yourselves.

[tfvesquire]

**UPDATE**

After chasing this ticking problem for almost two years, I finally gave up and decided to swap out a lower mileage engine for mine and put an end to the annoying lifter issues and terrible sounding motor. I was ready to drive my car into the first big oak tree I could find in lieu of pulling up to another Licks a** (Lexus) or Mercedes with a car that sounded like it had 400K hard miles on it and never had an oil change. I was just about to list my car for sale and use that money to buy a 2003-4 M45 when all my engine coils took a dump about a month ago. Now, with the passenger side head needing to be hot tanked and rebuilt, most like the drivers side head needing to be removed and cleaned and the thought of spending $700 buying a set of replacement coils only to put brand new coils onto an engine with issues I decided to find a low mileage engine to swap out mine and keep the car for a few more years.

I was able to find one locally from a 98 Q with only 78k miles on it for only $375.00 and a six month warranty. Salvage yard already disposed on the car, but swore it ran out good and gave their standard 6 month unlimited mile warranty on the motor. It was pulled and kept inside, so everything was well oiled and not rusting up. The replacement engine included all the coil packs and exhaust manifolds, but all the accessories and brackets were already removed. PS pump was only a 1 1/2 years old. I also had a new alternator and all new drive bearings and belts, so they swapped those plus my A/C unit to the newer engine. The cost for the swap was only $500.00. While the engine was going to be out of the way, I told them I had a replacement steering rack ready to be installed and negotiated a price of only $125.00 to have that installed. Even though they kept my car almost 12 days, I got a replacement engine engine installed and steering rack for only $1K. Now, my car is quiet again and runns smoothly like it should. They only had to swap out one fuel injector from my engine. I did a quick tune up and cleaned the TB, IACS, MAF and ran a good dose of fuel injector cleaner thru a 1/4 tank of fuel. so far, no CELs, no studdering, no wiring issues and no leaks.

I really tried my best to unclog my HLAs and clogged oil passages to no avail. I did not post this information above, but just before the coils crapped out, I even tried one last dicth effort of running a quart of Kreen in my oil and a 1/2 quart in my fuel tank. According to what I read, if nothing else worked to free up lifters and dissolve stobborn varnish, Kreen would clean it up and get things flowing again. I will say that stuff smells terrible and I really thought it would work, but just like all the numerous other solutions I tried and tired again, even Kreen could not get my engine clean. I can now state I tried EVERY cleaning method short of pulling the heads and hot tanking them to remove the varnish that was plauging my engine and my sanity.

To recap, here is wha I tried:
More than 6 cans of CD2 (lost count)
More than 6 bottled of Marvel Mystery Oil (lost count)
More than 4 cans of Valve Tech (lost count)
More than 4 Sea Foam cans in the oil (lost count)
3 Amsoil engine flushes
4 LubroMoly engine flushes
2 applications of trans tune in the oil
2 applications of ATF in the oil
More than 4 applications of Risoline
1 application of JB engine tune up
1 Bilstein Engine Flush
2 oil changes w/ High Mileage engine oil
Synthetic changes with several different brands and oil thicknesses/ratings
1 Application of Kreen
Countless oil filters and wasted time......

I seriously want to beat the f*ck out the prior owner for subjecting me through this torture for not maintaining this great car. I refused to give up and in the end, instead of gettnig rid of the car for next to nothing, I chose to put another grand into it and make it right. I cannot think of another daily driver I've owned in the past that has but me through so much and still would not cause me to give up hope. I wish those with similar symptoms on their car the best. I will say the engineers who designed and built the 97-01 Q45s really contructed them with tight tolerances and small little oil passages.

Good luck fellow members. Looks like Im going to be a around here for a few more years.

Ted

[N/A Q45]

Maybe you just had oil pressure issues?

[tfvesquire]

Maybe you just had oil pressure issues?

I thought so as well. I tried 5w30, 10w30, 10w40, some Lucas Oil, thinning it, thickening it and nothing worked. No matter what grade oil I tried, if I ran it hard and "primed up" the lifters, it would run quiet for a few miles and then they would idle and leak down. From everything I could find to read on this issue, it all pointed to clogged lifters or oil passages.

I did have the oil presure checked early on and it checked out fine. If it was the oil pump, I would think it would stay the same regardless of how hard the engine was run.

Are you making that suggestion based on fact (persoanl experience) or just throwing that suggestion out there?

[N/A Q45]

They need X amount of psi to work . I don't know much (never have had to try and clean them or anything out of a engine) but normally running staright ATF will do it could just do it for a few min or a week (just dont drive hard at all). But you tried that right?
Another thing about the oil pressure I don't know if you checked it cold/hot, what rpm?

I had a worn out ka and the oil pressure was under 10psi at idle but when I reved it it went up, I am almost thinking your motor might have been a little well used or had a internal leak.