Lifters replaced, still strong clicking noise

I have a 96 Cherokee Sport with 137K on the engine. A loud click developed somewhere around cylinder 5 and 6. Sounded like valve train/lifter noise and so took it to a mechanic. He confirmed the problem and so I added motor flush and then change oil per instructions and no help. Took off the head and replaced all the lifters and at the same time had the exhaust tube manifold welded (small crack). Cylinders look great with minimum to no carbon build up - valves the same. Loud cllick remains! Clicks in idle and increases with rpm's. Had profi give visual check to head and valves and he saw no problem, but??? Oil pressure strong, but could the pump make such a noise and transmit to this area? Visual check of the cam when lifters were out was all lobes were O.K. Any ideas, experience on this one?

I am having a click sound also with my '87 and hoping it is just a lifter. There are some other possibilities .......

1) Warped push rod (place on flat surface (piece of glass) and see if it rolls smooth)

2) Rocker or sticky valve

3) Blocked oil passage so enough oil doesn't get to the lifter.

4) Broken piston ring

[QUOTE=Pipewrench]I have a 96 Cherokee Sport with 137K on the engine. A loud click developed somewhere around cylinder 5 and 6. Sounded like valve train/lifter noise and so took it to a mechanic. He confirmed the problem and so I added motor flush and then change oil per instructions and no help. Took off the head and replaced all the lifters QUOTE]

Thanks for the ideas. Pushrods are all straight, rockers all look good, w/o wear and valves are working fine (visual with cover off). I can loosed rocker 11 and the noise goes away once I tighten it slowly and not all the way. With a little time, however, it returns. At least the problem is in the valve train.

Could be a noisy injector.

Try this remedy. run the engine at idle without the valve cover and slowly crank each rocker ALL THE WAY DOWN. I'm not kidding. In the jeep book it tells you to torque them to "specified torque". this means all the way down at a certain tightness. it will take two rounds to do this. first round is to take up the slack, so be quick, you don't want the rockers to loosen by the time you get back around. the second round is to SLOWLY crank each all the way to like 13 lbs ft, give or take. the reason for this is to force all the oil from the new lifters and give them a chance to bleed down, also to keep the rockers form loosening. I did the same thing on my old truck and it worked wonders. just remember to check the repair manual if you plan to do this on other cars. The basic principal is to bleed the new lifters from excess oil, and to keep the rockers from working themselves loose under engine operation. Once all the way down, the lifters will automatically compensate for lash. also, check your exhaust manifold gasket.

Problem solved! Took the oil pan off to find parts of a piston. Took #6 out and found that the front piston skirt had broken off! The back skirt of the same piston was also cracking. All the others look fine, so must have had a defective one from the beginning. Thankfully, #6 cylinder wall is not damaged and so will have it up and running in no time. Thanks for the comments.

we have a 95, and when we bought it brand new, there was a lifter noise. they say it is normal to have a lifter noisebut if you narrowed it down to a different lifter then it is something else. But i think whe the 97-98? year came out they elimited that noise and loss 10hp in the process.

thats deffinatley not good.

No its not, but what can you do?

put a small block in it.

True.lol