Valve ticking at start up.

[GizMo22t]

I don't think it a problem I should worry about but. During my car's morning warm up lately I have noticed a Valve ticking. It is pritty loud but the ticking goes away when the car is warmed up. I just hope that it's not giving me a warning before something happens. Should I be worried or should I ignore it?

[gt tankie]

I've got a 92 gt legacy wagon and it's been doing the same thing for bout a year. I recently gave the engine a liter of water thru the intake manifold via the vacuum line on the throttle body which got rid of the tick I had.
Sounds risky but it worked for me. Get it up to normal operating temp, rev to bout 4 grand and hold it there. easy with a helper to do this. With a small tube connected to the vacuum line on the throttle body drop the free end into the bottle of water and it will suck the water up like a pig. Should take about 2 minutes and result initially with a black cloud of smoke and steam and fart a shit around abit but eventually you will just have steam and a burbly sounding motor. Just keep the revs around 4k.
This apparently is a trick used on engines during WW2 to clean carbon deposits caused by the fact that they ran pretty much anything that would burn thru the engines. The super heated steam that occurs during combustion breaks down carbon build up and it goes out the tail pipe. My guess the tick is thru things getting close to each other with carbon on. Whatever, it worked for me. You can read more in the engine forum under,"solve that tick with a cool glass of water".

[entirelyturbo]

I would suggest the water trick first. I have not had the opportunity to try it myself, but I've heard great stories about it.

It might also be that the valvetrain is starved of oil during initial startup. Try an oil filter with an anti-drainback valve that prevents this from happening.

Also another possibility, hydraulic valve lash adjusters?

[Legacy777]

anti-drain back oil filter is not really necessary with our engines IMO. The filter sits vertically.....the only place it can drain back into is the filter itself.

[entirelyturbo]

That's a very good point...

Now on a car with the filter facing upside-down, it would be important, but our cars have an ideal filter placement. Easy to get off, clean (since you don't spill any oil), and the filter retains oil. God I love Subarus!

[mTk]

I'm going to attempt the water cleaning, will get back w/ the results

MK

[GizMo22t]

I think I will also try the water trick as well. Thanks for the help.

[ciper]

The water trick is great, but it probably wont get rid of all the noise.

The HLA do fail, they also get gummed up if you dont change the oil often enough. They are "relativly" easy to replace if you do your own work. Subaru actually changed back to solid adjustable units later on.

[JasonGrahn]

So the lifters themselves are at fault?

Have you ever done the swap yourself? Do you forsee any issues (crank angles, etc) that may be caused from swapping hydraulic over to solid?

inquiring minds want to know (mine!)

[ciper]

I plan to reuse the hydrolic units. When function properly the valve spacing should be more accurate than the solid adjusters.

[mTk]

Tried the water cleaning, don't think it did much of anything, at least for my car (That's cause i keep it in such good shape )

I did notice a noise in the engine though, sounds like it might be a bearing starting to go. I'll see how that goes...


MK

[IggDawg]

the "tick" is jsut a subaru thing. just about every older subie has it, and most new subies have it in cold weather. it's a boxer engine thing. it will certainly do it LES if you get new HLAs and steam clean the carbon out. but don't fret if you still hear a little. especially if the engine has been off for a while.

[Legacy777]

try some engine oil cleaner.....it's basicaly kerosene....or something similar. Run it for a couple minutes right before an oil change.

I did mine a while back, seemed to help....plus I had been trying different oils, so I wanted to flush it, and stick with one brand.

[andys2]

So the thing is that I deviced to put this EJ20 in my rally car cause my orginal EJ25 conversion didn't seem tuned properly and it also clacked like crazy. It clacked so bad that it took the pleasure out of driving. In fact it clacked so bad that I actually went to the dealer to have them check it out - first time ever to the dealer for help. Last time too. Anyway the noise was a clack proportional to RPM and not a function of any loading. It did, however, get much quieter when warm. So the dealer says it's a shim over bucket valve adjustment issue. The valve adjustment was $$$... they said 200, they billed 750, I paid 400. Sigh. Anyway, I put the engine in and the noise was STILL exactly the same.

Skip to the EJ20..........

SO then I found this EJ20 at a local wrecker. 60K miles and not run for about three years. It's now in and running and it makes the same GD racket as my other motor!!!!!!!!!!! And this time it doesn't get any better with engine temperature.

I sounds to me (I hope) like it's one thing ticking (clacking) per cam rotation. It's distinctly on the passenger side head. And it's freakin loud! Really loud. It's basically the dominant sound when the car is running. Like someone is hitting the head pretty hard with a hammer.

Could this be a stuck HLA? The old oil was pretty goopy when I removed it. Can HLAs be this loud? I haven't driven the car yet but it has idled for probably more than an hour. Plus I've reved it up a bunch... then "drove" on the stand with a braking load to get some boost action - which happend to blow the intercooler right off

So, any ideas?

[professor]

I disagree that ticking is normal

my engine has 182k and its so quiet at idle, that several times I've turned the starter cuz I didn't know it was running, something usually reserved for Hondas and Toyotas

ticking is weak HLA, if you replace them, they'll shaddap