OK, I have a 96 camaro, with the 3800 series II under the hood. It has about 160 thousand miles on it, but still runs pretty good. But it also started getting a little tick to it. I have figured that its a bad lifter on the passenger side. So what I am wondering is, how much trouble is it going to be to change it? Should I plan on pulling the intake off, or changing all of them while I am in there? What parts do I need to get ahead of time to be ready for this job? Any help would be great, as this is a daily driver and I would prefer it not to take a month to get it done while gas is 4 dollars a gallon. Cause my truck is only for taking the trash out anymore, 10 mpg sucks.

Kenny

 

Yes you need to remove the intake and valve covers to replace the lifters. Has you intake been done before?

The classic GM lift tap can be caused by a small dirt being caught in the lifter.

If your oil is pretty clean I would try a seafoam oil treament let the car idle for an hour or do some light driving and change the oil using mobil 1 and a good filter. If your oil is already pretty dirty you might was to try some cheap oil and a cheap filter add the sea form to that run it and let it run an hour than swap in the good oil and filter.

 

well its clean now, but I kind of neglected it before the last change. I ran some cleaner through it a couple years ago. I think the intake gasket may be leaking oil anyway. How hard is it to get it out with the motor still in the car?

 

If you know you had dirty oil I think you should try the oil swap with the seafoam and Mobil 1. Even if you need to do the intake gasket for another reason.

I would do the oil swap first and see if the noise goes away if it does then just do the intake. If it does get quite that means it was just a pc of dirt lodged in the pump side of the lift, that can happen is a brand new lift if the oil is dirty enough.