Adam, You probably have a very common, very easy-to-live with syndrome with collapsed lifers. First, change the oil using Castrol 20W50 and switch your oil filter to a genuine German one from the dealer or (cheaper) a list vendor. Our vans are beyond the day when they can get by on Walmart oil changes. Even better, short your oil filling half a quart and make up that half quart with Marvel Mystery Oil. Now start the car and go drive, the noise will be gone in 20 minutes. There's no harm done to your engine to drive it noisy, but it's irritating. Not letting it sit for over a week or two with good filters and oil will probably keep it from happening again.
To REALLY fix the problem you need to replace the lifters.
You can do this through thee levels of convenience: Buy new lifters, pull the head, pushrods and tubes and pull the old lifters out with a magnet. Replace all else. Do this when you need to repair the leaking rubber head gasket and you've only added the cost of the lifters to the job, convenient if you need to do this anyway. More expensive but easier is to pull the rocker arms and pushrods, then pull out the tubes with a big pair of pliers. Remove the lifters and replace with new ones. Put in expandable tubes (which adds cost) and replace the pushrods and rocker arms. This way you don't have to mess with the heads. But if you'll go back to the first suggestion, use the right oil and a good filter, I'll be you'll be happy with the results. Jim
On Dec 19, 2005, at 8:01 PM, Adam Thacker wrote: > Hi all I hope I am not in for a major overhaul but here is what > happened. I > parked my van for about 3 months, it was running good when I parked it > and > the other day I went out and started it up and there was a loud ticking > noise that would not go away. At first I thought it was dry in the top > end > from sitting but it kept doing it. Any Ideas? Is this a simple fix? I > am > freaking out since I parked it early to save any wear and tear on the > engine > and now it's doing this. Just my luck. > Thanks for any insight. > > 1987 Westfalia GL > Automatic Transmission. > > > ./athacker > |
Please note - During the past 17 years of operation, several gigabytes of
Vanagon mail messages have been archived. Searching the entire collection
will take up to five minutes to complete. Please be patient!
Return to the archives @ gerry.vanagon.com
The vanagon mailing list archives are copyright (c) 1994-2011, and may not be reproduced without the express written permission of the list administrators. Posting messages to this mailing list grants a license to the mailing list administrators to reproduce the message in a compilation, either printed or electronic. All compilations will be not-for-profit, with any excess proceeds going to the Vanagon mailing list.
Any profits from list compilations go exclusively towards the management and operation of the Vanagon mailing list and vanagon mailing list web site.