new engine still giving me grief

[itchyfeet]

Yes I am thinking the same thing, tolerances are obviously not so tight. I have just been reading a post about an American V8 with tappets that look identical inside to mine but with a roller on the base. The sizes look pretty compatible also. Their instructions were never to pre-fill new tappets before fitting, fit as packaged. The post said that these tappets were designed to bleed down quicker than usual and that they also pumped up much quicker than usual. Apparently in the V8 application they caused issues if they were fully pumped up before fitting and would pump up in a few seconds anyway? The preload used was 1.5 turns..

interesting, I have been thinking it may be possible to fill a tappet enough without taking it appart, afterall if you start an engine thats been stood for a year chances are the tappets are not very full. some oil is better than no oil I think.

So why not try submersing in an bath of oil (a pan heated on a stove would be better) and pumping the plunger, once its hard it must be full.
will try it later if CJH doesn't beat me to it.

[CJH]

So why not try submersing in an bath of oil (a pan heated on a stove would be better) and pumping the plunger, once its hard it must be full.
will try it later if CJH doesn't beat me to it.

I'd be surprised if you'll have much success doing it this way. Inside the engine there'll be a lot of force from the pushrod, and it'll be operating many times a second, and even in those conditions it can take 10-20 minutes of driving for drained tappets to quieten down. If you think about how small the gap is between the plunger sides and the lifter body, and then imagine trying to squeeze air past the plunger, I think it must be the case that's it's really being pounded out as miniscule bubbles.

Incidentally I did test fill, jus to see how difficult it is. I filled the empty tappet until oil started to dribble out of the hole in the side. Then I dropped the plunger in, and of course it locks fairly solid way above the level it needs to get down to to allow the clip to be fitted. And there's probably air in there still, trapped when the plunger was dropped in. But I found that if I use a soft poker - I used a cocktail stick with the pointy end trimmed off - then I could push the check ball down very gently and allow oil, and any air, out of the cavity so that the plunger settles down to nearly the right position against the plunger spring. It took surprisingly light pressure on the check ball to open the valve. The plunger still isn't far enough down to get the clip in (half a mm or so to go), so it'll probably still need to go in a vice, with the cut off end of an old pushrod as the 'pusher', but I'm fairly confident at this stage that the cavity is free of air.

[itchyfeet]

I'd be surprised if you'll have much success doing it this way. Inside the engine there'll be a lot of force from the pushrod, and it'll be operating many times a second, and even in those conditions it can take 10-20 minutes of driving for drained tappets to quieten down. If you think about how small the gap is between the plunger sides and the lifter body, and then imagine trying to squeeze air past the plunger, I think it must be the case that's it's really being pounded out as miniscule bubbles.
.

I'm not talking about getting thm perfect just good enough to fit without having to take them appart.
when you build an engine it may be a few days or more before you turn the key, even if you carefully fill them they may have drained a bit before they see any action.

[itchyfeet]

Going to try an endoscope tomorrow to see if you can view tappets without disassembly.

Well it works well, this is the 7 quid jobby off ebay that lots of us purchased a while back.

You can at least see if there is any damage or missing clips by just removing the rocker cover.

Interesting to note oil level

[itchyfeet]

Yes I am thinking the same thing, tolerances are obviously not so tight. I have just been reading a post about an American V8 with tappets that look identical inside to mine but with a roller on the base. The sizes look pretty compatible also. Their instructions were never to pre-fill new tappets before fitting, fit as packaged. The post said that these tappets were designed to bleed down quicker than usual and that they also pumped up much quicker than usual. Apparently in the V8 application they caused issues if they were fully pumped up before fitting and would pump up in a few seconds anyway? The preload used was 1.5 turns..

So why not try submersing in an bath of oil (a pan heated on a stove would be better) and pumping the plunger, once its hard it must be full.
will try it later if CJH doesn't beat me to it.

This works to, oil needs to be hot nothing was happening cold ( which is probably why they don't quiet down until your engine oil gets hot)

press down and hold a few times and a load of air comes out , not it's pretty solid, some air in there still I'm sure but enough to fit IMO without disassembly, filling and reassembly which is a PITA.

Now to wash that pan before she sees it

[CJH]

Well it works well, this is the 7 quid jobby off ebay that lots of us purchased a while back.

You can at least see if there is any damage or missing clips by just removing the rocker cover.

Interesting to note oil level

That's impressive - would be a good way to see whether the pushrod is seated properly too.

[CJH]

Circlips arrived today. The 18mm circlip won't compress down enough to fit through the 16.5mm hole in the top of the tappet body, but the 17mm circlip just about squeezes through. It's not tight once the pliers are removed, and stays loose enough to move inside the lip. But there's no way it could fall out - it's uncompressed diameter is 18.3mm, almost 2mm bigger than the hole.

The plunger doesn't make contact all the way round - it touches for about half it's circumference, plus the two circlip tails, which I reckon is a lot more contact than the paperclip makes.

[CJH]

press down and hold a few times and a load of air comes out , not it's pretty solid, some air in there still I'm sure but enough to fit IMO without disassembly, filling and reassembly which is a PITA.

I couldn't replicate this. I started with an empty lifter, and heated it up in a saucepan of Lidl's finest 15w40. As it warmed up quite a lot of air bubbled up out of the hole in the centre of the lifter cup by itself, so I thought it was going to work. But once that stopped, nothing I did would get the lifter to go solid. I must admit I didn't persevere for very long because it felt like an accident waiting to happen, to be pushing hard on the lifter in a saucepan of hot oil, with slippery fingers!

[itchyfeet]

yeh accident waiting to happen I agree.

I will have another go and see if it was just a fluke or if it is repeatable, will measurs oil temp too, if was proper hot and smelly.

[123-jn]

Good news , Although that noisy tappet is still an a*** in the pain, It now stops rattling much sooner probably less than a mile and the engine smoothes out shortly after that. Hopefully it will continue to wear in!!! I am going to fit some ducting to my oil cooler so that I get fresh air as well as cooling air from the torque convertor when I am moving along. I am also going to get another oil pressure sender to put in the adaptor in the gallery so that I can monitor that for a bit using the same gauge (just swap the wire over!!!)(The present one is by the oil pump in the main feed)

[123-jn]

When I said it stops rattling after a while this is not strictly true, It just quietens enough so the exhaust note drowns it out but it becomes a rattle rather than a knock. I have asked B/W whether they have had any trouble with them and tried to locate the bad one using a stethoscope , this seems really difficult but I reckon it may be cylinder 1. I have taken two old tappets out of the 1.9 and roughly refaced them to remove the slight dish in the base and will try substituting these in cylinder 1 and see what happens. Then depending on whether there is still a problem I can continue to substitute 1 cylinder at a time until I find it!!!