Greetings.

It looks like my -91 has produced an extra noise in the engine compartment which can be described as tapping or clacking. It is not ticking as it is "more". Water punp, fan bracket and timing kit were done couple of thousand miles ago. Car has about 210k kilometers (130k miles) on the clock.

Gentleman in this link eventually found the reason to be lifters (buckets).

http://www.lextreme.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11909

Have you come across this sort of problem with the early LS400s?

Do you think it might be probable cause in my case as well?

I'm asking this as they are two quite different things to prepare for a valve adjustment than bucket change. We can take care of the buckets but it'll take some time to prepare.

 

It can be anything from valve lash, to a wrist pin bushing to a rod bearing if the sound is internal.

 

Let me rephrase the question:

Have anyone of you perhaps come across this sort of bucket wear/damage on these early LS400s as described in the link in the first post?

 

Wear can happen and is why things are rebuilt, cams reground and such. These are not hydraulic lifters like some cars so there is periodic maintenance to check and adjust the clearance.