quick question about lifters...

i have a 98 3.8l and im pretty sure one of the lifters is sticking, i can hear it clicking inside the engine, i heard that running a little kerosene will help free up the stuck lifter, any ideas on what i can do? thanks in advance!

clicking? as far as i know a stuck lifter won't make a clicking noise, last time i got a clicking noise from my engine it was because one of my rocker arms had loosened itself and the pushrod was actually losing contact then tapping it again...

a stuck lifter would leave one of your valves open, and if that is the case then a piston would be contacting your valve, which is really really bad... does your engine feel like it is running on only 5 cylinders? like can you notice a lag in power, or a chugging and you go up in rpms?

He means stuck as in collapsed. Yes that will make a ticking sound.
Better than kerosene is to change your oil & filter and leave out 1 qt of oil and put in 1 qt of auto trans fluid. Run it like this for a week or so and then drain it out and change the filter & oil again.
The detergents in the trans fluid are very good at breaking down sludge and other deposites in the engine and turning them liquid so they can be drained out.

collapsed huh? can't say i've ever heard of that... i thought he meant it was stuck in the up position or something lol. i swear dude, i say this everytime u post but u know alot of stuff i've never even heard of...

May be try to adjust the valvetrain. What kind of mlg? Is it the noise from the inside the engine or the rockers. A failed lifter would really loud. If it just ticks a little getting the crap out will help. Also the pushrod can be dislodged now. Actually with a bad lifter the engine wont exactly miss (only in extreme cases). and not neccerary there will be valve floating. I have a similar problem but the thing is that my rocker arm clutters no matter how hard I try to eliminate the lash (it lost compression once because of that)
I heard that if you adjust it to extremely small lash this will eliminate the clicking and wear on the valvetrain (maybe)
I actually set my lash to smaler setting so i got 180 psi on all cylinders and the motor runs awesome. (a bit noisy and one rocker arm is a bit annoying)
Try adjusting with the engine running

yeah i mean stuck as in collapsed, sorry i should have been more specific, my fault, thanks a lot for the help, i'll try to oil and transmission fluid idea...thanks again!!

A little seafoam in the oil can also help.

i swear dude, i say this everytime u post but u know alot of stuff i've never even heard of...

you gotta love that...