First let me give you some background:
I just put a freshly built lsvtec motor in my car, ready for boost. I have arias pistons, eagle rods, stock sleeves bored .20 over. Stock b16 head with new springs and stem seals.
Start it up for the first time and it runs but it makes a wired knocking sound really randomly..
So i take my car to get tuned a few days ago(hoping i would be able to get it running long enough to pinpoint the problem) and its running pretty well.. get the idle smoothed out but as soon as its revved to ~ 2 - 2.5k rpm the knocking sound comes back. It doesn't fade in or out as the motor is revved up to that point .. its just like on or off. But its still does not have any pattern to it.

-edit- sounds like its coming from the top end

So i pull off the valve cover and check everything .. keepers, cams, run a magnet through and everything is fine. Drop the oil pan and notice a little bit of metal shavings / flakes. Now im not positive but i think some of the metal could be from drilling the oil return line for the turbo.

So I'm thinking and thinking about what the hell it could be and i come up with the idea that maybe ( not even sure if its possible) the vtec solinoide is stuck open and as the motor creates higher oil pressure it starts to randomly engage vtec.

So does anyone know if this is possible? What should i check next? does anyone know what the hell is wrong

Thanks in advance for any help
al

 

you positive the shavings are from the oil return? you sure its not the bearings?

 

not positive, but I don't think its bearing related because it's not a constant noise.

 

is it more of a ticking than a knocking? if it is maybe its your lma's.

 

lma's?
:edit: just searched to find out what they are... and im going to check them now, thanks for the idea/help


Modified by vtec'n at 12:33 PM 7/16/2005

 

I think the lma's might be the problem because a couple of them seem to stick. Can anyone describe how loud a bad LMA is? Like a really loud / sporadic valve tick?