A series engine woes!!

[maestro vans]

One of the vans developed the dreaded bottom end grumble...oh no:(. I noticed oil coming from the head gasket and dripping on the floor. I removed rocker cover and noticed one of the engine head bolts next to thermostat had snapped. The nut and bit of bolt was in the rocker box. I assumed this had allowed the head to pass the oil. I removed the cylinder head and replaced the head gasket. Put everything back together and retorqued the head to 55LB/ft. Now thank god the rumbling sound has gone, but now their is a top end rattling noise, sounds very much like rocker valves type sound...
I checked the valve clearances were 0.014" and they were all ok.
I am stumped as to what would cause that top end rattle. Its more pronounced at the top left hand side where the oil leak occured.
Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Do you think the oil pressure would have been low. I assumed if this were the case I would have seen the oil pressure light come on on the dashboard. The noise only started today, so fingers crossed there might not be too much damage.


maestro vans

[G Force]

Hi maestrovans, I would recheck the valve clearances and using slim tipped feeler gauges take care to only measure where the valve stem contacts the rocker arm itself. Because the rocker arm wears only where it contacts the top of the valve stem, if you use feeler blades with a broad tip you can be measuring the gap between the non-worn part of the rocker arm and the valve stem, which will give you excessively large valve clearance settings.

Be careful not to over-tighten the rocker cover nuts. If you over-tighten the nut you can distort the rocker cover enough so that the long neck of the nut tightens against the rocker shaft pedestal. This causes rocker shaft noise to be amplified through the rocker cover.

Incidentally the correct head torque is as follows.

Tighten the nuts in the correct sequence to 26lb ft, then tighten in sequence to 55lb ft. Run engine for 15 mins or a 5 mile road test and allow engine to go cold. Still in sequence slacken each nut one at a time by half a turn and re-torque to 55lb ft.

Cheers:)

[maestro vans]

Thanks Gary, I will try this. Do you think this is the most likely cause of the rattling top end. Is there anything else that you can think that would cause the top end to be noisy. I suppose there is nothing else at the top. I will look at the rockers to see if there is any wear where the valve stem touches them. Any other ideas welcomed

maestro vans

[BIGLAD]

Dan has an A series on offer. See this thread.

http://www.maestro.org.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=10739

[maestro vans]

Anyone have any more ideas. Ideally I wanna try and get this sorted this weekend as I have a couple of days free to try any of your suggestions

[G Force]

Anyone have any more ideas. Ideally I wanna try and get this sorted this weekend as I have a couple of days free to try any of your suggestions

What have you tried so far?;)