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Hydraulic Lifters I think I did something stupid..


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ok guys I adjusted my valve clarences on my EA71 and umm the valve noise that I was experiencing didn't go away...now I seem to recall that the noise started up when I did an oil change with a 3/4 quart of MMO and a napa gold filter....after thinking about it, going through alternatives and checking around it would seem I have adjusted valves that require no adjustment..that is that my EA71 has hydraulic lifters and the MMO while cleaning the engine put crud in suspension in the oil that clogged up the passages to the lifters and hence caused the noise..now don't get me wrong there is no evidence on my valve covers that say 'hydraulic lifters do not adjust' but having inspected another late model ea71 and seeing what these labels look like they could easily have come off...

 

now the questions are:

1: how can I determine for sure other than taking my engine apart that it has hydraulic lifters?

 

2: if it does have hydraulic lifters and I'm able to clean the oil passages to them how do I restore the valves to the correct posistion that would allow the lifters to pump up to the correct level since I've in fact adjusted them out of spec?

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i am unaware of an hydo lifter ea71 that is the 1600cc motor of the mid to late seventys and in 2wds of the 80s hatches and wagons.

 

anyway if you do have hydro lifters use SEA FOAM in the oil and change the filter and oil every 2000 miles and see if it gets better. it should if its just a pluged lifter if the lifter is bad then you may have to change it.

 

of course you can let a hydo lifter clack away for a very long time as in the 10s of thousands of miles without much happening.

 

whay year is your car and make.??

 

PS sea foam is avalible at your parts store. and it has fixed about 6 out of 10 hydo lifter clacksing cars that i have worked on.

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some of the replacement JDM ea71's had hydraulic lifters, so it is possible....

 

usually if has the hydr lifters, there is a metal holder under the nut to "lock" it in place (fold up against the side of the nut)

 

and the process of adjusting them is different also. there is a good write up on it in the "How to keep your subaru alive" book....

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hey guys

 

ok it is an ea71 circa 1989 that means it had ea81 valves possibly hydraulic lifters (I've seen the label on another guys 1600) and a hitachi carb w electric choke, it has an ea82 bell housing with the starter on the left side of the car it supports all L-series accessories including power steering and AC so the block casting has threaded holes in it that earlier ea71s didn't have..Gotta remeber guys our cars come directly from japan and are RHD so while I've never seen an RX around here the only emission stuff our cars have are the PCV system and catalytic converter and we got 1600 L-series cars till '92-93 and they were never called 'loyale' like they were in the states or 'leone' like euro market subs...

 

I dunno if I can get seafoam down here but I'll have a look...

anyway I could get a scan from How to keep your sub alive about this?

 

so if my car doesn't have the locking device and no label saying do not adjust then it might have solid lifters..but then I have no idea how it went from smooth quiet operation 2 clatter after I put in the MMO so that kinda points to hydraulic lifters not pumping up..arGH!

 

thanks guys

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PoorMan, by using the MMO you probably loosened up some debris and blocked an oil passage. This is kind of common. I would suggest changing the oil and using a 20/50W oil. Something similiar to this happened with a 85 wagon I had. Used MMO with a fresh oil change and ran it for about 500mi. It clattered still, so I changed oil again with another bottle of MMO. It seemed to help and after a couple 1K, I did another oil change and the clatter was gone. Results will vary tho, and theres no quarentees.

Rob

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