Advice for Sticking "lifter" (HLA)

[SE-R_Dan]

So today I took my car to the car wash and as the attendant fires the engine to pull it into the wash bay, I hear loud startup clatter, and a loud ticking sound.

Since Luke swapped the SR20DET into the car pretty recently before I bought it, my immediate concern was that I'd spun a rod bearing. When I drove the car off the lot it made the same noise, so I popped the hood and listened, and it was definitely valve train noise, not a bearing. I was about 5 minutes from TRS in Culver City, so I decided to drive it over there.

As I was shifting I revved the engine to about 2500 and all of a sudden the noise went away. It really sounded like the "lifter", or hydraulic lash adjuster wasn't pumping up. Has anyone else had this problem on an SR20? My 2 previous SE-Rs have startup clatter once in a while, but nothing like this.

Gwan at TRS told me to run some kind of additive through the engine to dissolve whatever gunk caused the HLA to stick. Can anyone recommend a product I can try?

For the record, the car has a mostly stock BB SR20DET, oil was changed about 600 miles ago with synthetic (right Luke?), and the DET has been in the car for several thousand miles. I've been pretty easy on the motor, and it hasn't been past 6000 RPM in the last 100 miles.

George, Luke, others? Any advice?

[GtRider]

i had that same problem untill i bought
2 bottles of that motor flush (gunk)
poured it it ran the motor for like 8 minutes,
pour the new oil in and some lifter treatment oil and the noise went away.

[Moppie]

You really do only have 3 options.

1, rev the nuts off the poor thing and hope that frees it.

2, Try some engine cleaner type stuff, and an oil change and hope that removes any build up. (but at the same time it may create other problems byremoving gunk from places its preventing leaks etc)

3, pull the engine to bits.

[GtRider]

how many hydrolic lifters are in our engine's?
about how much for a set?