new to festivas need some advice

[festygramps]

I just bought my 90. Got it cheap. I was only going to keep it for a few months but now I like it too much to get rid of it. It has recently developed a nasty valve tap. It's really loud. The car still runs good, but I can tell it has lost some power. Oil is good and as far as I can tell the pressure is okay too. I'm thinking it's a bad lifter. How hard is it to replace? Any advice would be appreciated.

[zoom zoom]

The hardest part is getting the valve cover off... And that's not too hard!! These heads are pretty simple, so I'm sure you'll figure it out real quick after you get the valve cover off!

[festygramps]

Do you know how much oil splash you get when running it with the valve cover off? That's what I've done with other cars but it can get pretty messy.

[Larry Hampton]

Sounds like a collapsed hydraulic lash adjuster. Usually they're just sticky with goo. Before anything else you might try some Seafoam in the crankcase, that might free it up. I had one recently and the Seafoam took care of it.

[festygramps]

I've heard good and bad about seafoam. Did you just add it to your oil or did you run it thru the vacuum lines too?

[getnpsi]

You are not supposed to add more than a little bit seafoam to your oil. You can add some In spark plug holes free up rings I was going to do that this weekend and didnt make it. If you have already changed your valve cover its okay for full synthetics. They will do a very gentle clean. With cold weather you can go down to 20 weight, I do that and no harm... I even filled it with 20 weight in the heat of summer. I only get rattle at startup, I used to get it all the time cold or hot no matter what oil is in there

[festygramps]

The seafoam thing scares me a little. Sometimes it's better to not disturb the goo. I guess a little can't hurt.

[zoom zoom]

I do the seafoam induction through the pcv valve hose and also used it to soak the rings a couple times recently, but I'm too scared it will cause other leaks if I put it in the crankcase.

If you run the car with the valve cover off it will have everything within a 10' radius soaked in a matter of seconds. I still have a little oil on the ceiling in my garage for proof lol...

[festygramps]

That answers that. I'm not running it with the valve cover off. I'm with ya on the seafoam in the crank. With old cars there's some truth to the old saying "It is the goo that binds us".

[zoom zoom]

If your looking for a way to see which lifter is bad just take them out and try to compress them with a medium size pair of channel locks. If they're bad they'll collapse without much pressure. If you have to squeeze hard forget it just leave it alone. They're supposed to hold pressure. I think the proper way to check is to roll the engine over until the cam lobe is up and press down on the rocker arm to see if the lifter collapses, and do that 7 more times to check each one, but to me it's just easier to take the bolts out... You should be able to pull the lifter out of the rocker with the same pair of channel locks, just twist and pull. After the valve cover comes off it's 5 12mm bolts for each rocker shaft(intake and exhaust)

There's springs that hold pressure against the rocker to keep them held over, they can be tricky but make sure they don't get pinched between the shaft and the camshaft caps when you put it back together.

[Larry Hampton]

I had a collapsed one Seafoam wouldn't fix before, took the V/C off and just sort of wiggled them on the shaft, rotated the engine and did it again until I found the culprit and swapped it out with a known good used one.