new engine has some new problems

I have now been driving my car around for a few weeks and the car was running great but not anymore. The problem started just over two weeks after I got the engine running and has since gotten worse and worse. It started with a slight lifter tick but has gotten really noisy. The tick has now become a full blown clatter. The car has also started losing power in this time frame. To the point that the car has slowed .2 and over 2 mph in the 1/8th.

I reused old lifters when I rebuilt the engine but they weren't ticking at the time and now they are severly noisy. I had a problem that starved the driver side lifters of oil when I first started it. There was one thing I overlooked when I built the engine that caused this and it's a long explaination but I'll just say I learned my lesson (This was my first engine build in nearly ten years).

So my question is could this problem from when I first started the engine damaged the lifters and if so could that have hurt the power to the point that the car has slowed as much as it did.

I have pulled the valve covers and all the rockers are tight. When originally put the engine together I got 1/2-3/4 turns to preload on all of the rockers and it did not tick like this. The valvetrain is very noisy in general it's not just one lifter ticking. When diving the car the engine feels rough when at full throttle. It doesn't feel like this at all times and doesn't feel like this at all until the engine runs for 10 minutes or more. I tried using a thicker oil (20w50) but it did not help at all. As soon as the oil starts to warm and get a bit thinner the engine just seems to run rough. The noise has progressivly gotten worse the more miles I put on it.

I am gonna bite the bullet and pull the intake and replace the lifters hoping that will fix it.

The engine has 1,100 miles on it now. I did a oil change yesterday with 20W50 with no real change but it may be a bit smoother than before but the problem still exists.

At this point the only thing I can do without dissasembling the entire engine is change the lifters.


I am going to do a compression test and check the oil pressure using a mechanical oil pressure gauge at some point but as of right now I'm using the stock gauge. I know how inncaurate the stock gauge can be but with the old engine the oil pressure gauge would drop to 0 and the lifters didn't make this much noise.