Rover 25 tappets again

Harry,

what you are looking at is the cam cover gasket - which is a flat sheet that sits between the cam carrier (the oil runs through this to the lifters) and the cam cover (which has the oil filler cap screwed into it). You won't see any oil unless you remove the cam cover and the gasket underneath. Doing that will give you a good view of the cams and the lifters.

If the mechanic really changed the lifters, then he would have had to remove and then refit the cam carrier, so those oilways should be clear. There are also short diagonal oilways running from the cam carrier to the lifters, drilled through the cylinder head.

How bad is the noise? I've lived with 3 K-series engines, all of them are tappety sounding to various degrees, although the one in my race tuned Elise sounded bloody awful as one lifter would always fail to work properly until the engine had warmed up.

Andy.

Too my ear they sound very noisy, but I'm used to bigger and much quieter cars. It sounds much like a diesel engine at tick over with the bonnet up, though the noise is lost in the general engine noise if you rev it up, rather than becoming worse. At a tick over I can actually hear it progress through all four cylinders firing from the various tappet sequence noises.

You do not hear it on the road.

The (young) driver is not very mechanical, but suggested the oil light goes off when it is started, but can come on briefly as he stops at the end of a down sloping drive from a cold start. The oil is at the correct level.

He used flushing oil and refilled with the correct grade oil, prior to the mechanic getting involved - just to make sure it wasn't too thick an oil causing the problem.

For comparison, I have suggested he find another 25 owner and ask if he can listen to its engine.

Thanks for the help so far.

Make sure he listens to a car with similar mileage! Which is, by the way?

The noise going away when revving the engine with the throttle body sounds very familiar, whereas the faulty lifter on my Elise was VERY audable when driving the car.

Good luck, Andy.

A bit of a coincidence, but I just looked out the (closed) window after hearing a car outside with a very noisy tappet - turned out to be a MG ZR, at least 100m away!!

Now thats what it sounds like when a K series lifter isn't working!

Andy.

Andy expressed precisely :

Shown on the clock is 60K miles, but I have no way of being certain that is correct.

I'm not saying the noise goes away, just that it is drowned out by the general engine noise at revs. The engine itself doesn't sound too bad apart from the tappets at tickover. It is not one faulty lifter, I can hear what sounds like all of them, but not all making quite as much noise - but they have only been replaced yesterday.

I'm used to the initial noise from hydraulic tappets, which quickly dissappears as the oil pressure builds up from a cold start. This Rover doesn't go quiet, it just continues to make the racket all the time.