2.5l Making noise.

[Leggismaximus]

I'm sure this has been posted before but I am a new member and couldn't find a post. My 2.5l makes a lot of ticking noise on start up when it's cold but goes away quiet drastically when it's warm. I was told the cams in these motor get worn out and and you can't adjust the valves. Any idea what would fix this? I'm trying to upload a video of it now as this site won't let me upload directly off my phone but here is a video I found on YouTube. My truck is making the same noise also has 206k miles on it. Mine may make a little more noise than the truck in the video.

https://youtu.be/Xg2pd10ZaRo

 

[Leggismaximus]

https://youtu.be/Xg2pd10ZaRo

 

[Leggismaximus]

https://www.flickr.com/gp/146406205@N05/1e8rra

 

[Mark_88]

It is common on the engines and probably not going to cause you any problems other than annoying you...but you can put a sound deadener under the hood if you don't want to rebuild the engine.

My 2.3 used to tick all the time...the 2.5 I had in the 96 did not tick at all but it only had 50,000 km...once they get up there things start to slowly wear down and make more noises...

Depending on where you live you might try a bit of Lucas Oil Treatment...I used it in my old 2.3 with 300,000 km on it and it was usually quiet...until it started blowing oil out of every crack...but he Lucas helped it run smooth with very little noise.

 

[Leggismaximus]

Gotcha sir will the Lucas hurt the motor in anyway?

 

[Leggismaximus]

Also what brand and weight oil should I run in it? I just bought the truck a couple weeks ago. I was thinking about a synthetic blend 10w30

 

[Mark_88]

It's got 200,000 miles from what you first posted and you might be able to squeeze another 200,000 out of it if you take care of it. The Lucas oil should work with synthetic or you might want to change to the synthetic and run it without anything for a few weeks to see if it helps. I never ran synthetic in my engine because at one point I was getting less than 1,000 km on a litre...and it actually got worse so that I was dumping oil in every trip.

If yours isn't using oil it might be ok to run is straight 10w30. Whether that is synthetic or non shouldn't make too much difference in your case...but if you want to try it it won't hurt anything.

 

[Leggismaximus]

Gotcha sir I think I'm going to go to the 5w-20 blend that it recommends and see if that helps it out any.

 

[tomw]

Leggismaximus ... Did you see the 'edit' button down on the right hand side of your posts? Instead of adding one-line posts, you can just edit the previous post, actually, for some hours, I believe. That cuts back on the 'growth' of post count, and makes things easier to follow without paging and scrolling unnecessarily.
That said, take a look at the other post(you really don't need to make more than one, see first bit above) for commentary.
I would suggest you can use a higher viscosity base oil than the factory recommendation when your mileage gets high. What is high? Dunno. But 200,000 miles gives you freedom to use whatever you want. My old truck never saw 5W20 or 5W-anything as it was designed for the 10Wxx series of lubes. Doubt you could find 5Wxx anywhere back then. With a 10 base instead of a 5, you should start out with a more viscous oil, it will be 'thicker' when cold, and should lessen the taptaptap as the pressure will be a bit higher. Not a lot, but some. If there is wear on the connecting rod and main bearings(cam bearings, also), which there IS, the oil pressure is lower than factory, and that may cause the noises, along with some possible leakage internal to the lifter supports. In most cases, the noise is a long-term wear item, repeat, long term, with no appreciable effect. I have intermittent tapping on startup. It all depends on which lifter/support was under valve spring tension at the time of shutdown last. One or more may leak down when pressured over time, the time being longer than for most owners, and it will leak. It will also tap for a bit on startup. I ignore it. Successfully, so far, with no additional problems. Hydraulics leak, some more than others, and leakage in a lifter is a good thing in my mind, as it means the lifter is NOT getting solidified into one piece by varnish and 'stuff', which can happen if the gizzards never move. Leakage will carry off the stuff that can make the lifter stick. Noise is a good thing in this case.. Funny that.
tom