Mustang and Ford Performance Forums banner

97 cobra with loud ticking

2K views 4 replies 2 participants last post by  95sportster 
#1 ·
So I recently acquired a 97 svt in pretty decent shape, mechanically speaking. That being said, after my 16 year old drove it for about a month, it started puking oil into the coolant. So my brother-in-law (who is a non-practicing ASE certified mechanic) helped me pull the oil cooler and rebuild it, then put it all back together. Start up appeared fine, but rather than me taking a couple of minutes to look up the coolant filling procedure, I just assumed he knew what he was doing. Now I'm pretty sure we just filled the radiator and the overflow tank.


So after a few minutes of idling and waiting for the thermostat to open, he revved slightly, and that's when the valvetrain noise started. It sounds like a lifter, but it's loud. It is only at idle and goes away when under load. Regardless, went ahead and drove it home (about 12 miles) and it died three times on the way. Temp and oil pressure gauges appeared normal, although the temp did get up to the /a/ in normal. Of course if there was little to no water in the motor, who knows what temp actually got up to.


So is this a permanent screw up or an easy fix? Any ideas are appreciated. It still runs fine, but sounds horrible. It will stay in the driveway until this is figured out.
So I recently acquired a 97 svt in pretty decent shape, mechanically speaking. That being said, after my 16 year old drove it for about a month, it started puking oil into the coolant. So my brother-in-law (who is a non-practicing ASE certified mechanic) helped me pull the oil cooler and rebuild it, then put it all back together. Start up appeared fine, but rather than me taking a couple of minutes to look up the coolant filling procedure, I just assumed he knew what he was doing. Now I'm pretty sure we just filled the radiator and the overflow tank.


So after a few minutes of idling and waiting for the thermostat to open, (with water only in the resevoir) he revved slightly, and that's when the valvetrain noise started. It sounds like a lifter, but it's loud. It is only at idle and goes away when under load. Regardless, went ahead and drove it home (about 12 miles) and it died three times on the way. Temp and oil pressure gauges appeared normal, although the temp did get up to the /a/ in normal. Of course if there was little to no water in the motor, who knows what temp actually got up to.

After researching a couple of hours now, I'm thinking overheating caused rear valves on driver's side to seat incorrectly. What say the experts?
 
See less See more
#2 ·
The dreaded "head tick" is mostly common on the C headed engine. The exhaust valve seats are known to get loose on 7 and 8 cyclinders, causing the tick between the seat and the valve. The B headed engines (96-98 4 valve engines) have better water cooling through the heads than the C head motors. Therefore the head tick is not as common. Obviously it's possible but its kinda rare. If this was your issue, it wouldn't be shutting your car off. You would have a tick and it would carry with rpms. But the car will run. Has the car puked the water out of the expansion tank? This could get on the battery or coil packs and shut the car down. What did you find that makes you think it was your oil cooler that was putting coolant the oil? Oil coolers can fail but judging by your engines temps, it could have blown a head gasket.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk
 
#3 ·
04DeadShort, thanks for the reply. To answer your questions, yes it did indeed puke oily coolant out of the resevoir, but the oil remained clean and the performance unaltered. My hunch that it was the oil cooler came from the experience of many before me who had the same problem, and appears it was right. Although I haven't gotten to run it enough to flush all of the oil from the coolant system, it appears to have corrected the problem although it has created an even bigger one. Haven't tested compression yet but from the way it runs I'm almost certain that it doesn't need to be tested. No performance degradation at all. My guess is the reason it died 3 times on the way home was due to overheating...although the temp gauge was likely off due to only having coolant in the radiator and resevoir rather than actually circulating through the motor. I have since driven it about 20 miles with no performance issues, just the ticking.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top