lifter rotation

[Graham Thackrah]

Phil wrote:

"The lifters (and you have to look VERY carefully) aren't directly under
the cam lobes"

"A side-effect, though, is to alternately present the lifter with direct
and indirect oil feeds - jet to hole, and jet to back of lifter -
cyclically.  It seems to take between 10 and 20 seconds for a lifter to
rotate at idle in a hot engine - this is the cause of cyclic lifter
tapping - now you hear it, now you don't."

well bugger me, I always wondered why it did that!

The oil fill mark thing is not to do with oil pressure is it? _Hard_ cornering
and a low oil level makes my lifters go noisy when running and with a warm
engine. Unless this is caused by the oil level falling below the pickup
entirely, I hope not! Would filling the sump to near the top give a small
increase in oil pressure?

It only happens to me on a decreasing radius entry to a motorway (J42 onto the
M4 westbound nr. Swansea, it's great, approach at 70 odd and lift slightly, the
BMW following starts off close behind and by the time you're on the M4, they're
a _lot_ further behind) or on large roundabouts;)

On an old engine are the routes into the lifters for oil likely to become
slightly less free than new ones making oil pressure more of an issue? Now, how
do you diy baffle a sump?

The other thing I notice is a trip to the redline with lowish (on my car, below
half on the dipstick) oil level causes the lifters to get lively for a minute
or so though it waits 5-10 seconds before doing this... the effect is worse
with low oil than when it's filled up to the 'max' mark.

Good job somebody is now foolish enough to pay me a monthly wage, where do you
get lifters for 9 dollars then? URO charges a lot less than VAG but not as
little as 9 usd each, 100gbp (16 usd each) for a set for the KV engine I think.

Graham

1985 90q