Lifters? Miss fire, stomped!

[IDIDieselJohn]

Hi everyone!

I've got an interesting one for you today! on my '91 E250 Club Wagon 7.3

So late last year I had a miss fire and shake at idle, witch I determined it wasn't injector related, upon removing valve covers and pressing down on the rocker arms push rod side, I found I had 3 bad lifters that weren't holding pressure.


So I replaced all lifters, put everything back together, still had a slight miss, found a bad - 1 month old injector on #6. replaced it with another brand new one. Engine ran like brand new for 10 min idling.

I shut it down to finish putting everything back together, start it back up, miss fire is back and dry lifter tick.

After cursing every word I know, I said the hell with it, drove it like that for a lil over a month before storing it for winter.



Now I have everything opened up again (intake not off yet), I have both valve covers off and all my lifters have pressure in them? Engine been sitting for 3+ weeks now.

And it's got dry lifter noise when it runs, worst at idle. When a lifter gets noisy isn't it because it's not pumping up or holding pressure?

What else can this be? Any other way of finding out witch one went bad when all of them are holding pressure? It is miss firing, you hear it through the exhaust and has a very noticeable miss if you put your hand in front of the tail pipe.


Long shot but could my new IP be causing the miss and putting extra pressure on a lifter making it noisy?

I'm totally stomped here, and believe me, its no walk in the park getting this deep into an IDI that's in a fully loaded van...

 

[chris142]

Did it eat the cam lobes?

 

[IDIDieselJohn]

I was sort of thinking that...but i've never heard of an IDI eating cams. I know late 70's GM 305's had that problem.

 

[chris142]

I have seen them do it here when the lifter roller goes bad

 

[IDIDieselJohn]

I still have all the old lifters and none of them show any signs of visual wear of any kind, other than the 3 that didn't hold any pressure.

Forgot to mention in my post, this is a Ford Reman engine, that now has 219,000km (136k miles) if that makes any difference.

 

[icanfixall]

What "new" lifters did you install? Are they true roller needle bearing lifters or were they bushing roller lifters.

 

[IDIDieselJohn]

Their roller lifters, look identical to the ones I removed from it, Enginetech brand from Rockauto.

 

[icanfixall]

Their roller lifters, look identical to the ones I removed from it, Enginetech brand from Rockauto.

We ONLY have the roller lifter option for our idi engines. That roller runs on either a bushing or a needle bearing. You have to look closely for this important detail.

 

[IDIDieselJohn]

Anyway of telling them apart without taking them apart?


And I have compression numbers!

front of engine

----^----
310 300
300 290
300 300
410 310


Are those good numbers? Seems a tad low to me, however, no blow by and no oil consumption at all in this engine.

Any taughts on that one cylinder at 410psi vs. all the others around 300?

 

[no mufflers]

that is a little low. I posted the numbers from my old motor and the newer one I am using in my build thread.

my averages for the motors were, 317 old- 366 new.

 

[IDIDieselJohn]

I think I found the problem, when I removed the intake and valley pan, while observing everything inside, I turned over the motor, everything was operating normal down there, rocker arms all working properly.....but visually looking at the very last push rod, drivers side rear of motor, I noticed it looked odd, didn't sit very well on the lifter.

Looked out of place, sticking up abit more than all the others.

Upon removing that rocker set, found this:

Left rocker was the one with the pushrod that wasn't properly sitting in the lifter. It wore a really odd uneven ridge in the rocker. Right side one is normal no wear showing.

You must be registered for see images attach

It's been "tapping" the valve quite a bit from the look of the valve as well, last one on right, hard to see in pic, but I can easily feel with my fingers the tip is flatten and has sharp edges all around. Guess there was a problematic lifter after all!

You must be registered for see images attach

I haven't yet fired it up, it's all back together, minus the intake, I found some really horrible looking tall Orings that go at the back of the IP, the middle one that goes to the fuel filter, gotta find some and replace those before putting the intake back in and firing it up.

 

[IDIDieselJohn]

Its fixed!! I fired it up this morning, runs like a dream! Super smooth and healthy.

Can't believe it was that one new defective lifter, witch still held pressure when pressing down on it.



On a side note, I found my problem to my random loss of prime every now and then....the special thick orings that go in the hard line fittings, the center one behind the IP that runs up to the filter, that Oring was toast! Couldn't find anywhere that had those so I made one using return line hose, slipped it on and fits perfect!

 

[icanfixall]

Any good injecrtion pump repair shop will have these line seals. They are called olivves. Russ aka typ4 from oregon sells them as does mel aka agnem from pa who also owns conestoga diesel where the famous moos pumps are made.