Adam,

You probably have a very common, very easy-to-live with syndrome with
collapsed lifers.

First, change the oil using Castrol 20W50 and switch your oil filter to
a genuine German one from the dealer or (cheaper) a list vendor. Our
vans are beyond the day when they can get by on Walmart oil changes.

Even better, short your oil filling half a quart and make up that half
quart with Marvel Mystery Oil.

Now start the car and go drive, the noise will be gone in 20 minutes.

There's no harm done to your engine to drive it noisy, but it's
irritating.

Not letting it sit for over a week or two with good filters and oil
will probably keep it from happening again.

To REALLY fix the problem you need to replace the lifters.

You can do this through thee levels of convenience:

Buy new lifters, pull the head, pushrods and tubes and pull the old
lifters out with a magnet. Replace all else.

Do this when you need to repair the leaking rubber head gasket and
you've only added the cost of the lifters to the job, convenient if you
need to do this anyway.

More expensive but easier is to pull the rocker arms and pushrods, then
pull out the tubes with a big pair of pliers. Remove the lifters and
replace with new ones. Put in expandable tubes (which adds cost) and
replace the pushrods and rocker arms. This way you don't have to mess
with the heads.

But if you'll go back to the first suggestion, use the right oil and a
good filter, I'll be you'll be happy with the results.

Jim

On Dec 19, 2005, at 8:01 PM, Adam Thacker wrote:

> Hi all I hope I am not in for a major overhaul but here is what
> happened. I
> parked my van for about 3 months, it was running good when I parked it
> and
> the other day I went out and started it up and there was a loud ticking
> noise that would not go away. At first I thought it was dry in the top
> end
> from sitting but it kept doing it. Any Ideas? Is this a simple fix? I
> am
> freaking out since I parked it early to save any wear and tear on the
> engine
> and now it's doing this. Just my luck.
> Thanks for any insight.
>
> 1987 Westfalia GL
> Automatic Transmission.
>
>
> ./athacker
>