M52 tapping noise with S52 cams

[Sharino]

I installed S52 cams into a swapped M52 car for a friend. I bought the cams from ebay. After the swap, it has a ticking noise from the valvetrain and its slowly seems to get worse. I torqued everything to spec, has anybody else noticed this? It runs great and lots more power.

any ideas what to do?

[valleymotorwerks]

Cams are a bit bigger than the originals... any issues you had with the old lifters will be made worse. You could always try a different oil.. there aren't too many things you can get wrong on the install that'd cause a lifter tick.

[evandael]

^ i'm with him, try a thicker weight oil, or overfill slightly (.5 qt or so).

[328ijunkie]

My personal car did this too. More cam lift= more lifter squish = more lifter tick when they don't rebound quick enough.

[RobertK]

You can also try the ATF & Seafoam trick. So far it has worked for me both time I used it. Came highly recommended by a BMW Master Tech with 25+ years experience.

Before changing your oil I get the engine warmed up to temp, dump 1qt of ATF and half a bottle of Seafoam into the crank case. Take the car on a spirited drive for about 10 mins. The detergents help clean out any clogged oil passages including the lifters. It might even make more noise during this process because it thins the oil out so much.

After the oil change I add 1qt of Lucas oil stabilizer.

Just recently me E39 528i had a very noisey lifter and this fixed the issue and its never come back.

[e30rapidic]

You can also try the ATF & Seafoam trick. So far it has worked for me both time I used it. Came highly recommended by a BMW Master Tech with 25+ years experience.

Before changing your oil I get the engine warmed up to temp, dump 1qt of ATF and half a bottle of Seafoam into the crank case. Take the car on a spirited drive for about 10 mins. The detergents help clean out any clogged oil passages including the lifters. It might even make more noise during this process because it thins the oil out so much.

After the oil change I add 1qt of Lucas oil stabilizer.

Just recently me E39 528i had a very noisey lifter and this fixed the issue and its never come back.

this is exactly what I did a couple of months ago, helped. I used ATF