I hope someone can help me with this because I'm out of answers.

I have a 263 with hydraulic lifters. The two front lifters were noisy, so I removed all of them for inspection as well as the oil pan. Sometime before I got the car, one of the pushrods (cylinder #4) had been damaged and replaced. I found the remains of the chewed up pushrod in the pan. All the lifters showed some pitting on the bottom surfaces, so I replaced all of them with new ones. I throughly cleaned the pushrods and valve train
and oil pan. I then adjusted the lifters as per the Buick manual for hydraulic lifters. All of the lifters are quiet except for the (same) two first ones which remain noisy. The ticking gets worse as the engine warms up. When I listen with my scope, I can hear the ticking exactly where the first two lifters sit deep in the lower part of the block.

I don't know what to do next. Other than this the engine runs great. It has only 46k miles
on it and I use straight 30 weight oil. As a last resort, I tried some Justice Bros oil
treatment but that didn't help.

I've gone through all the prior "lifter posts" but haven't found an answer. What next?

Thanks, David
Santa Cruz CA

This is driving me nuts.....tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic
tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic

I'm willing to bet your rocker shaft is gummed up and you are getting no oil to those lifters...do a search on cleaning your rocker shaft, but don't be surprised if it is worn out...rebuilt ones can be bought through Kanter or CARS but are $$$, like 500. I bought a used one through Wheatbelt Buick and disassembled it and recleaned it. Did you break in your new lifters like you would if you installed a new cam? 30 minutes at 2000 RPM? If not, you may also be looking at some worn out lifters...

Oops...I just noticed you cleaned the valvetrain...did you disassemble the rocker shaft??? Did you disassemble all rocker arms, including ball studs, to clean the passages out?

Having never owned a 263 engine I would guess that your oil delivery to those two lifters is lacking sufficient volume. If I recall correctly, you prime hydraulic lifters before installation by imersing in oil and then using the pushrod to activate the plunger. When you cannot push the pushrod down then the lifters are full. I have also heard that pushrods can be primed on more modern v8's by dripping oil down the pushrod hole and pumping on the lifter with the pushrod.

But a lifter's prime will only last a few minutes or seconds if there is insufficient volume to replace the oil thats pumped out during operation. So if your tick returns then you need to research where the oil comes from and somehow verify that there is no restriction in those ports.

Did you inspect or mic out your cam shaft for wear? If memory serves, even slight wear on a camshaft is a problem because these are case hardened. Once the outer coating is worn off it wears out fast.