would changing oil grades help?

it seems as though overnight i have a short in my battery and a collapsed lifter. i know changing the oil grade wouldn't help the battery situation, but would it help a lifter that's making the loudest tapping noise on the whole jeep? right now i believe i've got 10w40 hd in there. would there be any advantage to changing it out to say a sae 20? i'm just looking for some way to keep the heep on the road without sinking money in new lifters, because while the lifter are out i might as well go ahead and get the heads done... but new heads without new rings would be conterproductive.. etc etc. you know how it goes.

 

You can change a lifter without pulling the heads. (I'm assuming you have a V6 since "heads" was plural). You only need to pull the valve covers and intake manifold. Take the rocker shaft out, along with the pushrods, then you have access to the lifters. It sounds a lot worse than it is, it's actually pretty simple. Changing oil grades will likely not help you. Actually, hot SAE 20 will be thinner than hot 10-40. If the lifter has collapsed (just a fancy word for "broken") there's not much you can do other than replace it. If this is the case, I'd do it sooner rather than later. It is possible to cause valvetrain damage or pound the cam out of it from all the free travel in the system. I believe lifters are available from Napa or Carquest on a single basis, you don't need to buy a whole set. If I remember, they're only a few dollars a peice. I personally wouldn't change them all either since the cam has worn itself to the lifters that are in there. Just changing one shouldn't cause you any problems. Good luck

 

The rule is you can use a new lifter on an old cam, but not vice versa.

I'd expect you'd want to run the engine with the valve covers off to localize the bad lifter. I'd think you could feel the one that's bad by holding a dowel against the rocker arm. Anybody done this? Does oil go everywhere?

Sometimes an exhaust leak is mistaken for a lifter. It can have the same tick-tick sort of noise.

 

Chirs,
I went through the same thing about a year ago. I replaced all the lifters and have been running it with no problems since...it's also nice and quiet. The whole job took about a day to complete since you had to pull the manifold and deal with getting those stinking things to seal. Pull the manifold, pull the valve covers and rockers, pull the pushrods (don't mix them up or drop them in the engine) and then just pull the lifers out of the bore.

As an aside, I also had a ticking noise coming from the flapper on the passenger side exhaust manifold. Got that fixed, but still had a bad lifter. Just something else to check before you tear into the engine.

 

oil grade changing is a poor cheap fix, it only makes the problems worse.

 

figured as much... i was just wondering if changing to a thinner oil would get a peice of gunk out of the way and help the lifter work again. it has to be a lifter, because they all clatter a little bit when it first cranks up, but then they go away (for the most part). it just got really bad the other day and i could hear it from about 40 or 50 feet away... i could't hear the engine but the steady ticking was very noticable.

hate to say it, but it's looking like a donor engine or rebuild is coming up verry quickly on me... the battery shorting out didn't help anything either.

 

Chris;

if you think your motor is in fairly good condition and not all gunked up inside. I'd go get me 5 quarts of 5-30w oil and a new filter and most important a can of "Sea Foam" and change oil and add the sea foam. if the lifter can be unstuck the sea foam will do it.
your local napa should carry the sea foam...........good luck

 

alright guys... some 5w30 and mmo it is. i'll run it like that for an hour or two and see if anything gets better. if it's still bad it'll be a VERY short time with oil mixed with some kerosene followed by another oil change. if that doesn't clean out any clogs the lifter will most definately be broken, and the others surely can't be very far behind. if it reaches this point it's a whole new set of lifters. i know it's not the absolute best solution, but i have absolutely no money and am taking 18 hours at school (read no job time if i expect decent grades). someday soon it'll be all over and the engine will be torn down with all the bells and whistles. right now it's just got to last until then... hopefully then end of this summer, but i'm not exactly counting on it.

 

old family trick on kerosene: install new filter. Run the engine for 4 minutes w/striaght kerosene. change filter. use new oil.

 

alright guys, got my new battery installed (three year free replacements are great... but not when it disables two of your cars in the same week, that's how bad my lucks been lately). anyway, i dug around the shed and found the bottle of mmo i was using a while back for a lead additive and threw it in the oil. wouldn't ya know it about ten seconds into cycling through the lifter quietened down a little bit, then cycled through louder periods followed by even more quiet periods.... and finally went away. so, it sort of did change the viscosity, but i imagine it did a whole lot more good than oil itself would.

i still need to change the oil, but i'm thinking about letting the mmo do it stuff for a little bit longer. hopefully everything will be a little bit cleaner when the new oil jumps in the engine.

 

Good to hear that you got it figured out. Put another quart of MMO in it with the oil change. Rather, replace a quart of oil with MMO when you change the oil. I've always run my F-250 like that