I thought the last engine to get hydraulic lifters was the '97, avitar pic is a second gen, that's why I assumed it was solid lifters.

i think 99 and up are solids!

What were your piston to wall clearances?
Are you sure you put the pistons in the right direction?

yes


I'm thinking the flipped head gasket has merit, which could really suck. Well, at least for the shop that built the motor. And, for you for more downtime. I was wondering why I hadn't seen a paypal. I think I know now. Good luck getting it sorted out.

Oh, and take down that video now before your shop sees it and blames you for all of the internal damage.

Yes, it has solid lifters.

How does one check for oil getting to the head? Open oil cap while engine is running and peer in and look for splish splash?

the fun way?

:giggle:

take your valve cover off and start turning the engine over!

Pop the valve cover off and see if you have oil everywhere. While it's off measure all the valve clearances.

Yep. That sounds a lot like the lifter tick from a brand new engine if its not primed properly before that first start, save that its continous where that usually goes away after about 1 second. My guess is valve train noise brought on by some sort of oiling issue.

Thanks for informing me. Shows how ignorant I am about NB miatas :)

I hear he knows what he's talking about. I forgot replace my cap once and it made a small mess in roughly 10 seconds. You'll be able to tell if there's oil up there with the cap off and the engine running. Just don't eat the apple, run it briefly only.

Sounds like no oil up top.

I would make sure to be there if the shop takes off the head. Then if it turns out they installed the HG on wrong they can't come up with some BS excuse to try and COP out of the repair.

I may have your answer. I had the exact same sound when i built my motor. Was coming from the head to. Check your cam gear bolts, make sure they are tight. I thought mine were tight but they wern`t and the little pin on the cam shaft wore an oval groove in my cam gear so every time the gear was spinning it was clicking since it wasnt tight. Drove like that for a week, then finally pulled the motor, i was kind of pissed i had to pull the whole motor for a stupid cam gear bolt from being loose but it was worth it. SO check it out!

sounds like the first stage of a spun rod bearing. The knock sound is your piston hitting the head, the more you run your engine the more worn down the bearing will get as it just keeps spinning so it will just continue to get louder.

I would also throw my $.02 in and say it's valve/head related. Spun bearings do sound similar, but in my experience early on you only hear it under load, at idle or revving with no load I have never heard it. Could be wrong, I have only dealt with two. One of which I beat on until it locked up and broke all kinds of shit. :giggle:

I also haven't dealt with solid lifters, but if it was HLA I would have said look there. With new dry lifters, my rebuild took 10 minutes of driving to finally fully stop ticking, at idle for the first few minutes it sounded like one was broken or something.

Random question, but does it make the same sort of sound if you turn the engine over by hand? Say you just put a 21mm o the crank bolt and turn it a few times. Also I would advise to pull off the valve cover and turn the engine by hand to see if you get oil in the head.

YES YES YES.

I had this problem a few months ago and had to re-torque the cam caps and it fixed it. It was the same noise. If this is a new motor you should trailer it back to the builder and he should re-shim for free.

If it were an oil pressure problem, 30seconds or so running without oil in the head would be disasterous and it would make worse noises than it is now. Its the lifters.

Turning the motor by hand won't make oil pressure.

what if the guy that built the motor put the head gasket on upside down/backwards and blocked the oil feed hole?

Then the cam would already be fused to the journals and I bet it would make a much more interesting sound.