Are they oiling well?
Could it be the dizzy oil passage is leaking too much oil for that side?
Oil restrictors?
What kind of cam?

Can you give as many details as you can? It might be a long night but we can probably help you fix it but we need details!

 

Cam is a comp 280
Rockers are comp rollers 1.6 on the intake and 1.5 on the exhaust.
I don't remember the brand of lifters at the moment. I will go dig in the garbage for the box.

The valley has these little blue things that screw into the oil drain holes. There are 8 of them. I think they are a sort of oil restrictor.

Heads are Dart Iron Eagles

 

when you had the valve covers off and ran the engine,,,did you use your hand to apply pressure to each rocker to see if you could feel the noise?

 

Yes. And I could never seem to feel it. Thats the strange part.

 

you probably need to look elsewhere? Can you post a video? Really curious? cam walk?

 

I will try to get a video this morning.

I don't think cam walk. I have a machined cover and a button in place to prevent that.

It's also starting at about 2k revolutions so I wouldn't think the cam would be walking that early

 

youve tried pulling off one plug wire at a time?

 

what would one plug wire at a time do?

 

ok here's the video

 

A stethoscope will help find the noises. Even a piece of tubing use in the same manner helps.

Is this a roller cam? Hydraulic? Sure looks like it from the timing chain.

The blue standoff are they to prevent the oil from draining down to those holes and into the crank.
In the picture provided the front and rear drain back holes have not been enlarged. That's not the proper way. They should be enlarged as big as you can get them and I mean at least one inch holes preferably bigger.
I would pull out the stands personally.

The oil restrictors I'm referring to are placed in the rear galleys either side of the rear cam plug.

 

Ah... yes... restrictors in the back. Those are in.

Hydraulic cam

 

pulling a plug will change the sound if the noise is in the hole(like a rod bearing or piston) Erick nova should check this out

 

Detonation was my first thought when the compression was listed.

 

Header gaskets, always check the header gaskets first, anytime there's a noise.

 

Was valve to piston clearance checked on assembly?

 

If your engine has 12:1 compression ratio what type gas are you using? Have you check the pattern on the valve tip to see if your pushrods are the correct length. Use a black sharpie to color the tip of the valves the crank the engine over without it starting. You don't want oil all over the rockers and valve tip. If you have a hyd. roller cam loosen the rocker nut until you hear a tapping. Then retighten it until it stops. Then tighten an addition 1/4-1/2 turn more. If you didn't do it like that then I suggest you redo all of the valves. You don't want them loose but you don't want them too tight either unless you want a wiped out cam. Check around your header flange for any leak that will sound like a ticking noise sometimes. I guess I type too slow I started typing after Post #15.

 

What should I be looking for on the tip? Should I see a complete wipe of the sharpie?

The motor did run before all of this. I'm not sure of the noise becasue the first few runs on the motor were with open header so I might have missed the noise. This all started after I got the exhaust installed. I came home from the exhaust shop with one rocker way loose becasue I had forgotten to tighten the posilock and since then I have had the noise.

 

Chris Straub would suggest no more than .065 sweep as centered as you can get. Center 2/3rds ideally.

Sunoco, Renegade, Cam2, Turbo Blue are all less expensive alternatives to VP.
All can bought by the barrel and that's typically slightly less expensive.

 

Like Eric has already mentioned. Don't run oil restrictor with a hydraulic tappet cam.
The three plugs above the cam at the rear of the block. The two outboard plugs/holes are the lifter oil/galley channels. The center plug/hole is oil for the main and cam bearings.
Oil restrictors will go in the two outboard holes. Pull the two outboard plugs and take a look. If you get a regular pipe plug then you don't have restrictors, If you pull out an object that is just over an inch long with a rubber "O" ring at the far end you have restrictor. You can replace the restrictors with regular pipe plugs.
As far as your lifter noise goes. Like already mentioned, check for header leaks.
Remember roller rockers are can be quite noisy.
If your distributor groove does not align with the lifter galley properly it can create a loss of oil to the passenger side lifter galley. To check for proper alignment of the distributor, set the intake with gaskets back on the heads, drop in the distributor, and take a look down the passenger side lifter galley from the rear. You should be able to see clearly past the distributor housing.
Best of success with your project.

 

Is there any way to do this with the motor still in the car? Really hoping I don't have to pull it out again

 

Might need to Oring the dist body too. Some of those are machined too small and leak a lot.

 

here's one other part that I just remembered. When the motor came to me it came with a combo of rocker arms. 1.5's and 1.6's. Currently the 1.6's are on the intake side.

Will this affect any of what is going on?

thanks

 

As long as you have the transmission bolted to the engine you will not be able to get to the rear of the engine. Most of the time when a block is taken to a machine shop they replace the plugs with screw in plugs, are you sure that is what you saw? The 1.6 rocker arms will not do anything but increase your lift from .480" to .512". There is nothing wrong with the camshaft you have, it is small cam compared to your compression ratio. You really need to know your head chamber size, piston head volume, Head gasket thickness, head gasket bore (part #), cylinder bore diameter, deck clearance, stroke, rod length, and intake closing point (ABDC) @ .050. Then you can go to this calculator to find your exact compression ratio. https://www.uempistons.com/index.php?main_page=calculators&type=comp

 

Quote:
"I'm not worried about the noise.. I just want to make sure before I hit the asphalt that I don't have something wrong in the motor"
take it apart, dont trust anything you are told about the engines history,blue print it,,,
if anything comes unglued,then you forgot to glue it or a defective part got missed
"

 

very true..

what I was saying was if the noise is just inherent with this motor and part of it running I'm ok with that. I don't need a quiet daily crusier.

But I want to make sure that it is just noise coming from the operation and not something out of the ordinary.

 

Well I changed out all the header gaskets last night just to eliminate that from the mix. Sound is still there so on to the next phase

 

what is your piston to wall clearance?

 

Honestly don't know on this build

 

Well I found my problem. Not to happy becasue now I get to totally tear down the motor and replace all bearings. But I guess better now than later..

Hole 8 was the damaged one. I wonder if there is any significance to that?

So, since I just bought a brand new set of hydraulic lifters and already soaked them, I can't return them. I guess I will be staying with a hydraulic cam for now.

Can everyone pipe in on a cam that they would think would be good for the car?

 

buy a solid flat tappet cam with pressurized oiling. The cost of you freshening the engine because you made a bad choice on cam selection will be the same next time.
Also the flat tappet cam is the bottom choice for a powerful engine so why use them?

 

It is always recommended to to do a complete tear down when a FT cam fails, but it might or might not be needed if you're running an oil filter (hehe - I'm sure you are.) Drop the pan and check the bearings and see what's in the pan. How does the dizzy gear look?

Or you could roll the dice and throw in a new cam and lifters and see what happens (not recommended), but it's been done thousands of times before. Much better to take a look at see at what's cooking on the crank bearings.

 

Let me hit that one more time.....
IT IS ALWAYS RECOMMENDED TO DO A COMPLETE TEARDOWN WHEN A FLAT TAPPET CAM FAILS.

There will be small chunks and slivers of tappet and camshaft steel throughout the motor, oil filter or not. They will do an excellent job of helping your next cam to fail.

 

You also have got to figure out why that happened and eliminate the problem.

 

The two most likely culprits....lack of lifter rotation and/or incorrect oil

Oil is easy to solve, just buy a flat tappet break-in oil, and don't skimp....Rotella is no longer a good oil if you are using ot thinking of using it.

Lifter rotation can be verified during initial assembly by marking them and rotating engine to confirm all lifters rotate on their own,,,and lifter bore problems can be corrected if needed.

On not doing a complete teardown and cleaning...if you can't afford the time or expense now....how can you afford to do it a third time??ain: Just words of wisdom, clean it out, risk of second failure without cleaning are probable 5 times higher...

 

Sorry to hear about your engine but this is why everyone is going to hyd roller cams or at least a solid flat tappet cam. Well the metal is all thru the engine now. After removing the crank and all the main bearings it would be best to pull all the plugs out of the front and rear oil gallies. Don't forget the oil plug on the rear china wall. Remove the oil filter adapter while cleaning. Flush the gallies out good. Then run the correct size engine brush through them and blow out with air. Clean the block with something like Simple Green or Purple Power and rinse. Dry as soon as possible. Be sure to clean your oil pump too. I would rub the cylinder walls with a transmission fluid soaked rag. Run the brushes thru the holes in the crank too. Then blow out with air. After cleaning the block replace all the oil plugs that you removed and the oil filter adapter. When assembling the engine this time get the correct flat top pistons that will give you about 10:1 compression with aluminum heads and 9.5:1 with iron heads. Measure the quench and make it .040. For a camshaft get a solid flat tappet or a mechanical roller cam.