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Lifter Replacement
| Question: |
"What's that annoying clacking I hear coming from my engine when I start her up or drive hard?" |
| Answer: |
"Those are hydraulic lifters, and they're easy to replace." |
| Level of Difficulty: |
Advanced difficulty |
| Time: |
Long, if you're clumsy |
Intro:
Remember where everything goes. It would be like eating french fries with vinegar and mayonnaise. Just wrong.
This is one of the more common problems associated with the I5 engine and usually occurs anytime around 100000 miles.
If your hydraulic lifters are getting noisy when starting the car or at idle then maybe
it's time to replace them, I did mine at the same time as changing my cambelt. Once you
have got the belt off the cam pulley and the cam pulley bolt is loosened off, you then
need to remove the cam cover so things like plug leads, throttle cable, ISV's need to be
removed or moved out of the way to make getting the cam cover out easier. After it's
removal then you need to undo the camshaft's bearing caps a half turn at a time so
avoiding any chance of the cam bending, I would start in the middle and work out. Once all
the nuts are off take each cap off noting it's oreintation on the cam and from which
bearing they came off of. I even went as far as putting four pieces of paper on the workbench
numbered 1 to 4 just so I got it all back together correctly.
*Brendan says: "Why not screw these caps to a piece of wood, in the order and orientation
they came off in? It will save you a headache later."
Now pull the cam out of it's
bearings in the head and try not to disturb the distributor drive otherwise the ignition
timing will be off. Now pull out the lifters and replace them with the new ones. You may
need a big pair of pliers to get a grip on them as the are quite oily. Replace the cam
seal with a new one (lubricate first with engine oil, not grease), and then reinstall
everything the way it came out, carefully installing the cam bearing caps, if you crack a
cap, you'll have to buy a new head!! You will also need a new cam cover seal.
You will then need to put the cam cover back on and all the other bits and
pieces that got taken off in the process.
It would now be a good idea to check the ignition timing as one final check, this is very
easy to get out of sync. Start the car and connect up a timing light and look through the
hole in the bellhousing at your nicely painted marks. If the car won't start, slacken the
distributor off and rotate so that the mark on the lip of the body (cap removed) is in
line with the centre of the rotor arm, this is TDC and the car should now run, go back and
set the timing with a timing light at between 17 and 19 degrees BTDC, there is a mark on
the flywheel to the right of the "0" deg or TDC mark, some flywheels even have a
whole range of markings making things really easy.
Hopefully by now all is running well, just keep an eye out for coolant leaks. If you have
not done this before then do take your time, it's really not a difficult job to do maybe
time consuming but you will save a lot on what a dealer will charge.
Notes: I completely ripped this off from Iain & Ralf's Coupe Quattro Homepage. The file has been changed to make it more "integrated" into
my site.
