pathfinder ticking What to do?

[dan96max]

I have a 2004 Pathfinder. I work at a salvage yard and we use the gas pulled from the cars to fuel our delivery trucks and employee cars. We had a really bad batch of gas, no idea what was actually in it. I was the first to get gas from that batch. 4 other cars ended up in the scrap pile from it. The cars just wouldn't start, almost like there was water or something in them and when they did stat they'd run terrible.

We drained all the gas out of mine, and changed all the filters. The car started to run good again, no power loss or anything, but I was left with this ticking noise. At first it would throw a knock sensor code and put the car into some kind of limp mode. After about a week of that the codes stopped and the car was back to running fine again, just ticking. I've put about 35k miles on it since then but now I'm considering trading it or selling it privately and I'm left with a car that ticks. Runs fine but ticks. I don't know if I should bother trying to fix it or just trade it to a dealer. If I keep it I guess I can live with it but it'll be hard to sell a car that sounds like this.

A couple youtube videos of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icXJTgxrDDg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzut2ikhZSw

[Pwnin O'Brien]

How fast is the ticking?

The injectors will make a faint ticking noise while the vehicle is running, it shouldn't be noticeable inside the vehicle cabin. If it is a loud ticking that can be hard inside the vehicle then it may be a fouled injector. The bad injector may still be working but it could be close to failure.

[Natedogg1701]

i actually asked my mechanic about this after i read your post, if you put bad gas in your tank and ran yur truk on it, then wut yur hearing is your valves ticking from sticking. the explanation i got is when gas goes bad, and all the fume evaporate out of it, yur left with a sticky, tacky liquid. so when that got into yur engine and traveled through yur valves it put a sticky coating on them, and the ticking is the valves being sticky. not sure how to remedy the situation, correct me if im wrong but seafoam i believe wud clean the valves out, again not sure so dont quote me. but thats yur tick, yur valves sticking. hope that helps

[dan96max]

Yeah this is kind of where I'm at with it. Half the people I talk to say injectors and half say lifters. Lifters make more sense I think since it doesn't seem as fast as a normal injector and using a screwdriver, none of the injectors really sound bad. It's deceiving though I guess, it could be echoing through the engine bay.

I think I just leave it now, taking the heads apart to change the lifters sounds like more hassle then its worth.

[Natedogg1701]

not lifters, valves them selves, when they open and close, yur hearing them pull away from the sticky substance that they sit in when they close, think of ripping a suction cup off a window, u get like a pop, thats the same idea with wut the valves r doin, just a different sound.