IH lifter rattle syndrome, What is it and do I have it?

One other thing that sucks!!! On these motors is the intermittent oiling thruogh the cam. Correct me if im wrong, but after building my 304 and doing the priming process, with no v/c's on. I saw no oil on either of the rocker assemblies. After a very big session of cussin myself and my buddy at the machine shop, like that woud help, I thought roll the motor while priming and see what happens and to my surprise look jed its oil!!! Rolled it a little more and got both sides whew!!!. After further investigation and a long talk with one of the ol hands at the IH dealer.he explained the system and showed me the holes in a 345 block and cam and the intermittent oil feed. He said this sucks but it works. Unless your cam bearings are in wrong or have seized up and turned. And also , he said nuttin but wix or baldwin . I use the purolator filter myself cause its easy pickins here. Mine leak down after a day or so of sitting but the pressure goes to 50 at start and stays around 48 when hot. At idle , hot it drops to about 20 lbs with 20 50 ,touch the throttle and back to 48 or 50 lbs
 
This is hilarious!!!

Back up in post #3 and #4, we jawwed about "external oiler kits".

Today I'm cleaning/re-arranging the shop. Got a pair of 152 motors on stands. I popped a valve cover off one to remove the rocker assembly to see if I could salvage some parts and what do I see??? A "top end oiler" workaround!

Look right above the spit hole that feeds the rocker assembly from the #4 cam bearing/journal...see that piece of 1/8" copper tubing that's been broke off???

Someone drilled a hole in the head right below the valve cover flat and shoved copper tubing in there. I bet the end of it went up and around the rocker tower and dripped oil on the shaft somewhere! The other end has been broken off flush with the head.

There is evidence that a "tee" fitting was in the oil gallery port where the oil pressure sending unit is fixed, no doubt they tapped the gallery at that point and brought the oil up and across the intake manifold and into the head!

The po virus cannot be stopped! No doubt this motor has toasted cam bearings! And this is how someone "fixed" that little issue!

Right in my own shop all along and I didn't even see this until today! Now that is juju thanks to Chad!
 

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About 12 years ago, I overfilled my Scout 345 oil by about a quart and a half. I was worried about the crank frothing the oil to bad effect.
I fired the engine up and it ran quieter and smoother. I kept checking the dipstick for froth but there was none. I have been running a quart extra since then and top off when it gets to the full level.

I have not seen anything about this phenomena on any of the other boards. This board is the best of the ihc boards as far as solid useful information. Keep up the good work.

Michael alexander
 
Amazing! Ive been scouring the net for days looking for this exact problem. Im new to scouts and thought man there has got to be something to read about lifter noise and a solution. Ill be adding an extra quart of oil tomorrow. Thanks.
 
Welcome to the forum hillbilly!

I'm diligently searching for a copy of the "service bulletin" that was sent to all IH dealers and fleet operators that outlined this scenario. We'll find that somewhere amongst the archives and when we do, we'll scan and post.

Please report back to us if adding the "extra" quart helps your situation. If it does not, then we'll assist ya in diagnosing...all ya need to know regarding the diagnostic process for the I-4 and sv engine lubrication system faults should be in this thread and a few others. But we're always looking for new validated information regarding this topic as well.
 
I know mm is gone from this board, but I am going to ask a question here that has bugged me for the longest time. Hopefully it won't get me tossed off this board! I know that the Chevy bb - maybe others, I don't know - had a problem with lifters making noise at start up and the problem was often (always?) air trapped in the forward portion of the oil galleys. Solution was to drill small holes in the forward plugs threaded into the galleys. Oil pressure would force out the trapped air and then tiny streams of oil would squirt onto the timing chain, I guess a side benefit, but not enough to compromise oil pressure or flow. Anyway, IH engines also have a similar arrangement. Has anyone considered maybe drilling teeny holes in those plugs right behind the timing gear? (well, one teeny hole in the I-4s). Just curious...
 
I use to drill tiny holes in the front gallery plugs but can't say I ever noticed any reduction in lifter noise upon start up.
 
So now I have lifter noise on a fresh rebuild. My motor clicks for about 5 seconds when cold started. Then perfectly quiet for the remainder of the warm up. Then, once warm, the noise comes on the passenger side. It will vary with driving speed and sometimes will go away when luging around in the neighborhood or parking lots. Gets much worse at sustained highway speed. I could live with a little noise but this sounds like it could cause damage! The motor was perfect for the first 4 hours of operation. Now the tick is here to stay.

Also, during inspection I noticed a few of my lifters were not spinning.

Here are the specs....
304 fresh rebuild
isky dual pattern cam
comp lifters
comp springs
cam bearing placement was checked and rechecked during build.
9 stand boat rockers (all boats fill with oil while running)
block was boiled twice and oil galleries scrubbed clean both times.

Break in procedure was followed to the letter using rotella 30 wt and zddp. Now running rotella 10w30 and a wix filter.

Oil pressure is 20+ hot idle and 50+ @ 2500 rpms. The mechanical oil pressure gauge isn't the best but my oem dash gauge is higher than ever too.
Verified oil flow to rockers and lifters by running motor with valve covers off. Lots of oil on the floor after this test. Also, the lifters were covered in oil. And I have tried adding up to 2 quarts of additional oil to no avail.

I was thinking that air bubbles in the system could cause the lifters to collapse during sustained high rpm driving so, I pulled the oil pickup tube and added another o-ring and sealant. Still ticking...

I ordered 4 more comp lifters to swap in as I can't identify exactly which one is ticking. When the cover was off is sounded like it was #2 intake. However, when the ticking is really bad it sounds like it's coming from everywhere.

I'm going to remove the rockers, rods, and lifters and spin the oil pump with a drill to confirm oil flow to the lifter galleries before I drop 'em back in.
 
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May not have any bearing on your issue, but just wondering why you switched oil viscosity after the break in. 5w30 is a far cry on the thickness scale from single viscosity 30wt. Seems pretty thin and runny for an sv8, even one that has been recently rebuilt. Personally, I wouldn't run anything lighter than a 10wxx in one of these engines and even that would be done with some trepidation.
 
I mistyped.... 10w30. I was concerned that the oil pressure was too high and maybe the straight grade was the cause. Evidently not. The pressure is just as high now.
 
scoutboy74 said:
May not have any bearing on your issue, but just wondering why you switched oil viscosity after the break in. 5w30 is a far cry on the thickness scale from single viscosity 30wt. Seems pretty thin and runny for an sv8, even one that has been recently rebuilt. Personally, I wouldn't run anything lighter than a 10wxx in one of these engines and even that would be done with some trepidation.
Click to expand...

What oil weight do you run? Will a different viscosity reach the lifters better? I'd run straight 50 if I thought it'd help!
 
I like 20w50 in experienced engines, especially in warmer operating zones. 15w40 is a pretty good, year round choice regardless of whether there are 5 hours on the clock or 150,000 miles. Straight 40 or 50 weight would be too heavy. I like the wix filters too. I'm not a lubrication expert, but I do know that pressure and flow can be mutually exclusive. It May seem counter-intuitive, but you can have good flow/distribution with low pressure just as you can have poor flow/distribution with high pressure. Even though I think the 10w30 is a bit thin, I'm skeptical that it alone could be causing your issue. Still, it May be worth your while to change oil and filter and replace with 15 or 20w to see if that makes any difference. When experienced engines develop lifter rattle, it is usually the result of one or more failed cam bearings. I wouldn't expect a cam bearing in a refreshed engine to exhibit such rapid failure unless there was an issue during the installation process. Sorry I can't shed more light on it for you than that.
 
Cool. Thanks!

I just picked up some rotella 15w40 and a new filter.

I'm also going to pull the rear cam plate and see if there is anything I can see going on in there. Maybe I can run a bore brush in the lifter galleries.
 
Thinking I May have an obstruction in the lifter gallery I decided to take a look. I pulled the rear cam plate and found what looks like excessive bearing clarence. This sucks! I thought the oil looked a little cloudy when I changed it. It looks like my lifter tick will only get worse unless I change the cam bearings.
 

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The other bearings are probably no better. The rear one we see in your photo is installed to far aft in the block. It should be seated below the plate mounting face about 1/16 and needs to be flush with the rear of the cam. This opens the flow channels that feed the lifter galleries and lines up the oil groove in the cam with the oiling features in the bearing.. There is no need to grind a notch on the bearing for the oil channels. Simply install it correctly. Most engine builders not familiar with this IH oiling system will get it wrong. See this post for more detail on positioning the bearings.
This member suffered a similar bearing failure but all of the bearings seemed to be installed correctly.

http://forums.IHPartsAmerica.com/gas-engine-tech/2801-rebuilt-392-lifter-tick-3.html
 
Care to mention who the builder was? Was there any pre-build discussion regarding their prior sv8 build history?
 
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