"Ticking" sound from engine

[Jake D]

Originally Posted by stateofidleness

You know, I thought about oil AS I WAS FILLING IT WITH $70 worth of new oil!! ugh..

The whole time I was wondering If I should have gone with a higher valued viscosity like a 40w or even 50w. I'm running 5w30 Mobil 1 Extended Performance.

Do a search on the oils that are recommended, but I'm pretty sure you aren't suppose to run 30 weight. I believe I've read that 30 doesn't provide enough protection, and that you should always run 40 weight

[jmatta]

I am certainly no expert, but I would put money on an oil change to a different weight, such as 5W40 or 10W40, will solve your issues. 0W40 is too thin, let alone 5W30. I've run 10W40 Castrol Syntec for the last few years and 5W40 Royal Purple before that...no ticking from my lifters.

[thstone]

A hydraulic lifter takes the place of the older valve tappet where a small space was left between the valve and the camshaft (or rocker arm). The tappets were noisy and required adjustment to maintain the correct clearance due to temperature and wear.

A hydraulic lifter works by filling the space between the valve and lifter with pressurized oil. This provides zero valve clearance which is quiter and performs like a solid lifter because the oil is incompressible.

Drawbacks are that the oil can drain down while the engine is off and then the lifters rattle for a few seconds at startup until the oil fills the space and the pressure comes up. This normally isn't an issue but a permanently rattling lifter typically indicates that the oil passage is blocked or there is some other mechcanical problem with the lifter and should be investigated.

Wayne over at Pelican Parts has a very nice write up on what it takes to get to those noisy lifters and Fig. 13 shows a very nice picture of the lifters:

http://www.pelicanparts.com/techarticles/Boxster_Tech/16-ENGINE-Camshaft_Swap_and_Chain_Tensioner/16-ENGINE-Camshaft_Swap_and_Chain_Tensioner.htm

[JFP in PA]

First of all, get that 5W-30 oil out of your engine; at a minimum you should be running a 5W-40, and preferably 10W-40 oil not from either Mobil or Exxon as they are the same company. That alone tends to address a lot of start up noises.

Secondly, these engines are well known for having noisy injectors. Get a good stethoscope (any drug store) and try listening to the injectors along the fuel rail at the side of the manifold. We sometimes find one injector that is just carrying on, but it can often be cured by running some Techron with the gas. If that doesn't help, replace the injector.

[insite]

i have a similar issue on my 3.4L, and had the same thing on my 2.5L. i have developed a theory.........

the boxster actually has an oil pressure regulator that is dependent upon temperature, of all things. it consits of a spring and piston that install into the oil pump under the car. the design is supposed to DRAMATICALLY increase oil pressure on cold start (100+ psi) and then back it off to around 20psi at idle when warm. my theory is that these actually go bad pretty quickly. the result is that it backs of the oil pressure at idle too much and can't keep the lifters pumped up.

i plan to replace mine at the next oil change interval. it's like $35 worth of parts. i'll try to post a pic later; my PC here won't let 'print screen' do its thing.

[tuanle16]

interesting. i have too noticed the ticking, but only when my engine compartment was open and i had the motor running. i don't think i hear it when i am actually driving, but then again, i have have just become attuned to the "ticking". never thought anything about it since the car seems to be running fine. i fiddled with it one day, but just gave up when i couldn't find the source.

at next oil change, i'll go with higher viscosity and see if it improves.

ps. i love this forum.

[stateofidleness]

mannnnn.... seriously... ugh... guess i should've read the manual/forums a little better first. That's an expensive lesson to stomach. It's good oil too. What should I do with it?

guess i'll head back to auto-zone tomorrow and look for some 10w40. if they have an even higher number, would that be better? (like a 10w50)?

Do I need to worry about taking the filter back off and dumping what little oil is in there too or should it be fine?

Did I read that correctly that I should NOT use Mobil 1 or Exxon? I've looked for Royal Purple, but it's pricey! I saw they had a sale on both Valvoline and Castrol full synthetic yesterday.

[JFP in PA]

Originally Posted by insite

i have a similar issue on my 3.4L, and had the same thing on my 2.5L. i have developed a theory.........

the boxster actually has an oil pressure regulator that is dependent upon temperature, of all things. it consits of a spring and piston that install into the oil pump under the car. the design is supposed to DRAMATICALLY increase oil pressure on cold start.

How does the current design or the pump’s pressure regulator supposedly respond to changes in temperature? Just wondering……………..

[insite]

Originally Posted by JFP in PA

How does the current design or the pump’s pressure regulator supposedly respond to changes in temperature? Just wondering……………..

i'm not 100% positive, but my educated guess is that as the spring heats up, it changes length, moving the piston into or out of the oil pump to alter flow. i have verified the oil pressure goes sky high at cold start & that this is normal. this is detailed in the owners manual. i think this is a pretty old design for porsche & is on a lot of their older cars.

a lot of the cars that tick experience mildly low oil pressure at idle, generally around 1 bar rather than the 1.5 spec'd in the manual. i'm thinking that over time, the spring's ability to properly actuate the piston diminishes, resulting in slightly low oil pressure at idle. i think this is the reason the ticking goes away with event a TINY application of throttle (i.e. 1200 RPM).

the spring and piston (25 & 26) in this photo are the parts at work. sometimes, the piston can get stuck & cause issues as well.

[JFP in PA]

Actually, the spring is under compression when the shaft and seal (#4&5) are installed into the pump housing. With the spring pre compressed to its installed height, if it got hot, if anything it would tend to try and grow slightly in length, increasing the pressure it exerts against the relief valve (#26), raising the pressure at which the valve relieved. An argument could be made that heating the spring could lower its tension slightly at any installed height, potentially offsetting the slight gain from its increase in length, which would probably bring the relief pressure back to somewhere near its ambient temperature starting point.

This design had been around for a long time; if you pulled the oil pump out of a 1955 Chevy 265 V8, you would find it uses pretty much the exact same spring and valve set up. For years (before they realized that oil volume is more critical than pressure to component life), engine builders altered the pump’s pressure characteristics’ by shimming the spring (adding a thin stainless steel washer under one end of the spring) to increase oil pressures, often well beyond 100 PSIG, which often led to other problems. Today, the focus is on delivery volume rather than high pressures, becasue high pressure actually sap horsepower due to the load on the pump. With the M96 design, raising the pressure by altering the spring pressure brings another issue into play as the higher pressures created by the gear section increase the load on the oil pump drive shaft (#3), which is already a weak spot in these engines. LN Engineering developed a heat treated chromoly pump hex drive that sells for about $20 after seeing several engines blow when the OEM hex drive snapped in two. If you are contemplating altering your pump’s pressure profile, you might want to look into replacing the shaft as well.