took the valve covers off today. I'm pretty sure the only thing that accomplished was pissing me off. I'm pretty sure the problem is on the driver's side, but I couldn't see any difference from one side to the other. I still have no idea how to fix that valvetrain issue.

 

did you start it to listen to see if you can tell where the noise is? yes you can start it without the belt or alternator on. make sure nothing is going to get wound up in the crank pulley. go to shbox and read the section on setting valves or lifters, you want the running way of setting. also see if you can find a couple videos on the web that show how.

 

my biggest problem with pinpointing what's going on is that the noise doesn't surface until I've driven the car around for a little while (I can't just start it up and the noise is automatically there), and the noise disappears when the motor exceeds 1800-2000 rpm. I spun the accessory pulleys individually with the belt off (didn't start it), and none of them felt rough like a bad bearing. I'll start it up tomorrow or the next day (whenever I have time) with the valve cover off first to see what I can see, then I'll try again before reattaching the serpentine.

 

hows the oil pressure holding out though all this? would be a good idea to find a bud that knows motors to help set the lifters. if you have a bad lifter it will usually show then.

 

oil pressure's seemed fine so far

 

I finished putting the valve covers and stuff back together. Drove it around a little bit and everything seemed fine, except I think the oil pressure was a little high (around 70 when I was on the gas, 50 when I wasn't). Does that seem about right?

 

yep seems good to me

 

just did my first bit of highway driving since getting the car back from the transmission shop. It still is rather reluctant to go into 4th gear, and when I got off the highway into city driving, 1-2 upshift seemed to arrive rather late and was accompanied by an audible thump--just like last time.

 

Well it's been a long couple of days. I drove from Sterling Heights to Lansing on Friday night and once again the car just refused to go into 4th gear on the freeway. I figured I got about 15 miles per gallon on my previous tank. Also, when I opened the gas cap, fumes came hissing out much more than normal (as in, it took a few seconds for it to stop). The drive from Lansing to home was an absolute nightmare. After the first 100 miles or so, the car never once went into 4th. Traffic along the way was horrible (5 separate occasions when I was going less than 15 mph). One time after a long stretch of stop-and-go traffic, I noticed that my temperature gauge was as high as it could go. I pulled off the highway as soon as I could and parked at a gas station with the hood open. I added some coolant, and about an hour later got on the road again. I kept a pretty close eye on the temperature gauge after that. It seemed to go way up again whenever I was slowed down, then went back down when I sped up. Maybe my fans weren't working (?). Either way, I finally got home after 8.5 hours (should've taken 6.5). Today when I checked the car out, I found that both my coolant and engine oil were WAY low. I checked the oil before I left Lansing, so apparently I somehow misread it horribly. I'm kinda pissed at myself for it. We put in a bunch more coolant and started the car up again with the radiator cap off. My dad noticed a leak near the front of the water pump, and the coolant started gushing out of the top of the radiator.


I regret to say that the car will likely be put on hold for the rest of the summer. It keeps having more and more problems every day, and I don't have the time or the resources in Michigan to keep fixing it. I'm only going to be home for two and a half more days before I go back, and that's not nearly enough time to get everything sorted out. aAt this rate, I'm spending money fixing the car faster than I'm making it. Since I'm so far away from home, I need something a little more reliable. Believe me, this decision doesn't come easily. I just feel like my hand has been forced, and it's really my best option right now

 

well it took about 6.5 hours, but I got that water pump replaced today. I sure am glad that's over with. After I leave for school, my dad's going to re-attach the intake and take it to the shop to get the transmission issues figured out (doesn't shift into 4th), then to take it back to the shop that did the AC back in May, because it quit working 2 weeks after it got fixed.

In other news, I was kinda pissed when I crawled under the car for the first time in a couple months and found my new ceramic-coated headers looking like this:













It's even all the way down to bare metal in some spots, and surface rust is already showing up. Grr...