Thread: Lifter tick

I've noticed my Sentra has a bit of a lifter tick going, or a tick of some sort in the engine. I changed my oil to a thicker oil (Rotella T6, 5W40) and it made no difference. It's pretty flipping loud when the engine is cold and first started and then settles down to a mellow tick once warmed up. Part of me is thinking that there might be some air trapped in there but part of me just thinks the engine is 13 years old and has 140,000 miles on it so it's going to sound a little noisy.

My question is if air is trapped in the system and I don't do anything about it is it going to cause serious damage? Same goes for a worn out lifter. I ask because I don't have the tools to fix it, if I did have the tools to fix it I probably still wouldn't, and I'm not paying a shop to tear down my top end just to push down on a few things and soak another couple of things in oil. That doesn't sound cheap. The engine runs like a champ, gets 25-30mpg, doesn't consume any oil, and had fantastic compression test results.

I removed plug wires while the engine was running and there was no change in sound so I'm pretty confident it's not a rod knock. Honestly it doesn't sound like a rod knock either so I didn't really think this was the issue.

I did some searching for lifter tick and it all ended up being rod knock so that's why I made this thread. If it's been discussed a million times feel free to flame away and I'll go crawl back into my hole. I JUST changed the oil so I'm going to go another 1,000 miles before I do the quart of ATF trick to see if it helps any.

http://www.sr20-forum.com/general-sr20/48599-startup-piston-slap.html

It shows up every once in a while. I have exactly what youre describing as well. im not sure what it is but the car runs great. Sort of sounds like there is no oil in the head when you start up then once pressure builds, it goes away. Thats what mine sounds like anyway.

Unless it sounds like a rod knock, you are probably ok. But if it gets too annoying, put a VE in it

can always bleed the hlas to see if that helps out your noise

Is it sad that part of me was hoping it was rod knock for that very reason?

If air is trapped in an HLA, you'll have some pretty loud ticking. Lifters eventually fail if not bled properly. Very easy to bleed them if you don't mind pulling the cams out.

Our injectors make substantial ticking noise.. Have you ruled those out already?

huh

I looked up some videos of air in the HLA and my car isn't nearly as loud as those. I'm just going to assume it's old age and not worry about it.

Thanks for the help everyone!

Ok...

The fuel injectors in sr20 motors are loud. They make a loud ticking noise that can sometimes be misdiagnosed as lifter noise. Just make sure its not that before ripping into your head.

Does that make more sense?