It's been a while between updates but here we go.
The car had developed a loud lifter ticking noise around mid December, a bottle of liquid mechanic (Nulon lifter free up) seemed to have
worked for my 2000km round trip to Victoria for Christmas. I left Christmas Eve at 10PM to go see my family for Christmas and about half
way between Keith and Naracoorte I hit a bunny, no damage to the car but he left some flesh on the exhaust flange where his back got caught.
After heading through Mount Gambier at around 5AM Christmas morning a wallaby jumped into the side of the car, he went straight into
the freshly painted drivers guard but didn't leave a single mark there miraculously, but the passenger door wasn't so lucky
It's hard to get a picture of it but it is about 12cm wide and 2cm high.
Sure enough after my trip the lifter noise had come back with a vengeance and I haven't been able to take the car off the road just yet.
I inspected all the rocker arms to see if the trunnions had any side to side shaft play with the valves closed and sure enough all 16 did,
that's what happens when monkeys tune cars and adjusts the rev limiter to 6500RPM on a stock valve train, lifters, cam etc..
I have no idea who actually tuned it but my guess is that it's at least 10 years old, well before my mate owned the car too.
I am absolutely certain the noise you hear is not the rocker arms, it's definitely a lifter.
The rocker arms were all removed in the correct order, inspected along with the pushrods for any wear and they were all okay, besides the trunnions.
Some of the valves were open during the video, when all the valves were closed all 16 arms had the same play side to side.
After a lengthy discussion about finances the engine is being removed to do the lifters, rocker arm trunnions, valve springs, retainers,
pushrods, oil pump, cam (STILL haven't decided what to choose, it's been weeks and I still can't make my mind up), cam bearings,
double row timing chain, new head bolts, full engine gasket kit, heads milled 0.050" for higher compression, 6 speed conversion,
a 3.73:1 LSD diff from a VY Clubsport, VCM plastic OTR and a new tune.
The workshop that is doing all of this recently bought and installed a brand new Mainline Dyno and will be doing a baseline run before
any work is done to the car, if it breaks on the dyno then at least it's in the right place to break!
That's all for now, more updates when they happen.