Quote:
Originally Posted by FishStretcher
I checked the valve lash as best I could. But I am slow. So a hot engine becomes a cold one. But they seemed to be in spec. The noses of the cams looked like the flat tappet shim *over* bucket VW engines I used to have at 100,000 miles. And they would easily go 200K on the valvetrain. These are direct acting shim under bucket, but otherwise quite similar.
I really don't know. I will do a leakdown, although it seems to run fine. After that, I will just keep an ear out. And an eye on the pressure warning light. And I should check that to make sure it is working correctly.
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Either a compression or leakdown test should pick up a valve seating problem, but the leakdown is a static test is done at TDC, so it might not pick up a sticky valve since that's basically a transient problem. However if a valve is sticking, that could cause the clearance between valve/tappet/cam to temporarily increase more than normal as the cam lobe moves away from the tappet, so it might click just like it would if the valve lash/clearance was too large. Hard to imagine that a valve spring couldn't overcome a sticky valve, but they probably use pretty light springs on those OHC motors since there isn't much intertia in that valve train, so that ticking you hear might indeed be the symptom of a sticky valve! There is so much mass/intertia in an old pushrod/rocker arm system that very heavy valve springs are needed to keep all the gaps tight at high rpm, which may explain why sticky valves are pretty rare on older engines!