A: What you refer to as plug knock is more accurately called spark knock or ping. It can be due to higher compression than the fuel is designed for. Choosing a higher-octane gasoline often helps. Piston rod knock may cause the noise, but usually not during a given gear change.

Knocking occurs when fuel burns unevenly in your engine’s cylinders. When cylinders have the correct balance of air and fuel, fuel will burn in small, regulated pockets instead of all at once. Engine knocking happens when fuel burns unevenly and those shocks go off at the wrong time.

Engine knock is what happens when a portion of the fuel inside the cylinder detonates before the rest of the fuel. If the octane rating of the fuel you’ve used is too low, or there’s other damage elsewhere in the engine, some of this fuel may detonate prematurely. These detonations create the knocking or pinging sound.

Engine spark knock happens when, the fuel mixture is subjected to either too much compression heat or both. So, if your engine is making that annoying knocking, pinging or rattling sound; then you’re probably experiencing engine spark knock.

Some of the ways in which you can fix engine knocking include: Upgrading the fuel that you put into your car and going with something that has a much higher octane rating. Taking your car in for a tune-up and asking a mechanic to provide you with new spark plugs and spark plug wires.

When your engine oil is running low, it stops lubricating the engine components. When these parts are no longer well-oiled, they cause loud clunking, knocking, and grinding sounds. This can cause your rods to break, which will give off the knocking sound from underneath the hood of your vehicle.

Any fully formulated oils would not lead to knock. Viscosity would lead to an issue. But switching from conventional to synthetic would not lead to motor knock.

Adding more oil will make the noise go away, but it won’t solve the underlying cause of the noisy engine – the oil leak.

Usually, people get a misconception that the engine may be noisy due to synthetic oil. But if you are one of them, you are wrong! Best Synthetic oil makes the engine quieter. Synthetic oil has low oil engine noise.

Using synthetic oil in your engine is a GREAT choice. Synthetic oil does a much better job in your engine than conventional oil. You need to be cautious though. Because synthetic oil is so much better than it’s conventional counterpart, it can actually cause a noise where there wasn’t one before.

List of the Best Oil Additives for Noisy Lifters

• Bar’s Products Rislone Engine Treatment.
• Liqui Moly Hydraulic Lifter Additive.
• Marvel Mystery Oil the Original Oil Enhancer and Fuel Treatment.
• Red Line Break-in Oil Additive with Zinc.
• BestLine Premium Synthetic Engine Treatment.

With an average labor cost of $80, this means the average labor cost will be in the area of $500. On a four cylinder or straight six engine this will be a four hour job, which means it will cost approximately $320. Parts will run you in the area of $20.

How to Unstick a Valve Lifter

1. Run an engine detergent in your gasoline, and use a higher-octane gas. Often, fuel system cleaners or detergents can free up engine debris and stop a valve lifter from ticking.
2. Use an engine flush, and then change your oil. Engine flush products are available at many auto parts stores.

The malfunctioning lifter will cause the pushrod to bend and fall out of space. When that happens, it leads to a dead cylinder that might break valves, rocker arms, or even damage the entire engine.

When you drive for too long on a bad or collapsed lifters, the inside section of the lifters can go all the way down to the point where they contact the camshaft and damage the camshaft. You shouldn’t drive your vehicle for more than 100 miles if you have bad lifters.

The most obvious symptom of a faulty hydraulic lifter is the noise it creates in your car’s engine. You can usually distinguish the faulty lifter by the distinct sound. Instead of a knock or ping, a faulty hydraulic lifter will usually make a sound more reminiscent of a tapping sound.

Lifter tick can happen due to dirt in your engine oil, low engine oil levels, improper lifter spacing, or overall faulty lifters. You can get rid of the lifter ticking sound by changing the engine oil, clean the lifter with oil additives, adjust the lifter spacing, and in rare cases replace the entire lifter.

Yes you have to remove the heads to get the lifters out on these motors. There is no real safe way to get to them without removing the heads.

yes you can replace just lifters and continue to re-use your original camshaft. to replace lifters, you do have to remove the cylinder heads, but you don’t have to buy new cylinder heads…

A broken camshaft is usually caused by a connecting rod or other rotating part coming loose and striking it. Sometimes the cam will break after a short time of use because of a crack or fracture in the cam due to rough handling during shipping or improper handling prior to installation.

Valve lifters are one of the first components to suffer wear when the oil pressure is consistently low. Low oil pressure can result from a number of factors, including excessive camshaft end play and worn cam bearings, worn oil pump gears, worn crankshaft journals and bearings and worn main and rod bearings.

Yes, you can put new flat type lifters on a old cam with no problems, just not the other way around.