So I purchased my first Chevy. Its a 00 Silverado 2WD 4 door 5.3 V8. It has very high miles but I was told the motor has been changed. I test drove it with no issues. Plenty of power, no noises, no smoke. Went to start it after the fifth or six time and BAMMM I have a tapping noise coming from the driver side and it sounds to be coming from the top part of the motor near the valve cover. Anyone else experienced this or have any trouble shooting ideas?


P.S. The oil gauge was playing tricks on me the first couple days were it would bottom out and stay at 0psi but it never made any noises so I assumed it was just the gauge messing up.


Any help would be much appreciated.

 

You may have a bad oil pressure switch causing the 0 PSI reading.


The tapping is probably a collapsed/sticky lifter. You can tell which are sticking by removing the valve cover and watching the rocker arms as the truck idles. The sticky ones will barely move.


Some people have had luck removing the valve cover and rocker arm and spraying some solvent like a B12 through the pushrod hole so it can get into the lifter. Let it sit, repeat if wanted, reassemble and let it idle for a bit. If that doesn't work, you can try a motor flush to loosen the collapsed/sticky lifter. If that doesn't work, you can try removing the lifter and cleaning by hand it but since you have it out, I'd just replace it as long as the camshaft lobe is fine. I'm pretty sure you have to remove the cylinder head to get to the lifters so it's probably worth trying to free it up with chemical means first.


There are several videos on youtube for the 5.3L with sticky lifters and how to free them up.

 

Thanks for your response. My local mechanic tapped on the oil pan and the tapping went away. He said I was going to need a oil pump. Any tricks to putting a oil pump on?