Pull the motor, put a set of street oriented lifters in it, fix the pan while its out and move on. Its a weekend of work and aside from the lifters themselves, only costs a few bucks for gaskets and oil, which you are thinking about changing to heavier oil anyway.
I see no point in loosing sleep over what is essentially a couple hundred bucks, and some time in the garage.
Just my two cents.

 

So last night I had the engine builder come over to the house and help go over the pre-load again we actually went a half of a turn more this time to make them a little tighter.

DID ABSOLUTLY NOTHING

My only option now is to just drive it and let it tap itself to death

Or

We pull the motor and go to a solid lifter

fun times

 

Since the noise is better with cold oil, I'd try some higher viscosity.

I looked for the thread I mentioned over on the Bullet, haven't been able to find.

 

We have thought about that. The only thing is the instructions clearly says not to run thick oil. When the motor is cold it has 75psi oil pressure and they are quiet. When the motor is 180-185deg the oil pressure is about 45ish-50 it bounces reading it from the holley dash

it taps with the lesser oil pressure.

Not sure if that tells us anything or not.

I don't think the noise will ever go away. I either live with it or I swap them

 

I don't think you need a solid lifter, just a normal hydraulic roller that is actually designed to take up lash. I think the normal howards or link bar comps would be fine. What are the cam specs for this thing?

 

Duration @ .050 Intake 233 Exhaust 238

Gross Lift 1.60 Ratio: Intake .619 Exhaust .611

Lobe Separation 115

Intake Centerline 111

 

Street lifters, drive hard.

 

I switched to a solid roller 12 years ago and haven't looked back.

Call the cam company that made your cam and ask if you can run solid lifters on it.

 

So over the weekend I put 20w50 oil in and put about 150 easy miles on the car.

Long story short. I am going to disassembly everything so that we can pull the motor. The sound isn't going away

 

So last night I began to drain all the fluids out of the car and stayed up till 1am and got as far as I possibly could. I still have to undo the fuel lines and the turbo oil lines but for the most part its almost ready to yank out of the car.

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I also went ahead and gave the car a bath after over a year in the garage with a car cover on it.

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When I took off the headers I noticed all the oil in the each exhaust port. That explains why it wouldn't stop smoking. SIGH

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And this is where I left off at 1AM. I later taped the lower intake after I took this pic.

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Are the rings even seated yet?

 

I would say yes. Its had several heat cycles and I drove it 150 miles. We think the small PAC 1209X springs may of done something to the valve seals.

 

If it's running out the ports, valve seals is my guess.

 

I just hope we can figure out something different because all that stuff was new before we started the motor. It smoked from 1st start up. We thought it was just oil in the mufflers from when I blew a hole in the piston a year ago and it sent oil all the way out of the tailpipes. But the smoke never went away.

again............this is my luck with the car.

I'm growing very very tired of it

 

Where are you located?

 

St. Louis MO

 

Dude... I can't even. I feel so bad for you. Can you get a look down the intake ports to see if those are oily also? I'm with NX in thinking it's valve seals. Hopefully an easy fix!

 

I'm living in some kind of sick joke of a nightmare.

This is the last time I ever try and build a car. Its way to much trouble and not worth it.

 

If not for the trip to Redline, this wouldn't seem nearly as bad. Plus, look at what all you've learned!

 

If I wouldn't of gone to Redline I think my car would of still been running fine for the past 4yrs. Instead I've been in a hell since.

I also decided to change Cam lifters springs this time around and that's proving to be a mistake too. I should of just used the same crap that I had the first time around. It was working just fine with the old cam lifters etc. Here we go and switch things up a bit and it's been an epic failure.