ticking noise on 96 trooper

[jundizzle]

Hi,

I'm new to this forum and I'm sure most of you have heard about this problem before, but I didn't see anything in this forum on it. Anybody know what this could be and how to remedy the problem? I apprreciate all your responses.

[2eyefishclaw]

check the rodeo forum someone has an interesting post there on this issue

[frmmli]

Originally Posted by jundizzle

Hi,

I'm new to this forum and I'm sure most of you have heard about this problem before, but I didn't see anything in this forum on it. Anybody know what this could be and how to remedy the problem? I apprreciate all your responses.

Jundizzle:

I used to have a 95 with the same problem and learnt my lesson. Assume without checking that it also has the 3.2 V6 engine with the single overhead cam. In simplest term I can get and time I have - on each of the 2 cylinder heads, you will find two shafts I recall, on which the rockers rotates/rides on and at the tip of the rockers are these tiny hydraulic lifters(diameter of a pencil) which pushes on the valve. Engine oil pressure feed through a oil passage to the passage inside the head which runs to the center of the hollow shafts which also has holes on it to feed oil to the rocker arms and then to the inside of the lifter to 'lengthen it to take out the slack' between it and the valve therefore you have no ticking sound. There is a valve which kind of partially block the oil outlet pressure to ensure oil pressure to keep the lifters lengthened.

Isuzu has some sort of a hush hush 'conspiracy' over problem with this shaft. Forgot which one, believe it is the exhaust one, probably soft material (choice of steel) or mistake in the hardening causing the rocker to gradually wear out the shaft pre-maturally. Like at 50,000 miles Vs life time. They did not initiate a recall but let themself off the hook once warranty passed. So, here is what happen, the shalf starts to wear out, increasing the clearance with the rockers letting more and more engine oil/pressure to leak off, and in doing so, accelerate the wear, and spread out to more and more rockers and even those on the other shaft(different part number) and once the pressure is lowered, at some point some of the lifters will eventually not filled up and on one of these one thousand smacks per minute over the valve, the lifter collapsed(the expaning piston bottoms out and crushed to stick inside the lifter bore) and you have a dead lifter. I also specualte the metal from the wear may also cause the lifters to stick. Sooner or later you have more and more.......Anyway, the end of the story is, the fix to take out the noise is to open up the valve cover, and you will find a long list of item to fix, new shaft(new part number), new rocker(comes with lifters), and you can do the obvious if you are to dump the vehicle or to put in all new parts to have a trouble free engine. Your will end up spending about $2500 for the former to $4,000 for the later. That is the MOST likely problem you have. You have one more unethical choice, pretend it is a 'traditional' bad lifter symptom and trade the vehicle in to a non-Isuzu dealer REAL QUICK. All larger and experienced Isuzu dealers know this problem and some told me they used to do 2-3 jobs like this a week.

Of course, you may be the rare fortunate one which happened to not change oil deligently every 3000 miles and a lifter or two gums up. You approach to verify that is to put in real light wt oil like 0-30 Mobile 1 (there is a bulletin on that to take care of the isolated case of the ucky owners earlier on but eventually, they will pay if they unfortunately have the bad shaft), then run it on the highway for 30 mintues to see it the junk is thrushed out, and if not gone, don't hope that you won't see the bill.

Of course, you can also be the lucky one with the unlikely failure of a bad pressure regulator valve dumping you oil pressure. Anyway, you should not think you are lucky because what you don't see is the wear from the dropping pol pressure which mahy cause you engine failure at a later day.

All in all, Isuzu did not handle this problem fairly!!

Overall, I suggest you take the shortest route out of this one before you get hit with the bill.

No time to edit the text, please interpret accordingly. Good luck!