MonkeyElvis

Hey Everyone,
I was out changing the oil this morning, and with the hood up i decided to start it and let it come up to temperature, and just kinda listen to the engine. Well, to start with i noticed a clicking sound on the left side of the valve cover area, near the firewall. It's loud enough to be noticable over the engine idling and that concerns me, and then when topping off the oil... i took the the filler cap off, and out came a very fine almost invisble stream of white smoke.. i left the cap off to see how long this would go on, and 10 mins later its still doing it. Am I really screwed or does this happen to others? Any help would be great. thanks.

scott

Not much to worry about really... that stream of "smoke" is usually just the contaminants burning out of the oil... things like water from condensation, small amounts of unburned fuel etc.

The tapping sound is most likely lifter noise. Hydraulic lifters become noisy with age because they take more oil pressure to fill up. Most likely the noise will go away once the engine is run under load and up to operating speed, i.e. above idle. The bad news is that lifters generally never get quieter, and a noisy lifter is on it's way out.

Now, the good news is that a failed lifter doesn't usually cause catastrophic engine failure. It just makes noise.

There have been attempts by people to quiet these lifters by putting a quart of ATF in with an oil change and running it for a couple hundred miles and then changing the oil again. The principle being that ATF has detergents in it that oil doesn't, and sometimes this can quiet a lifter, if it's a clogged lifter, by cleaning out the obstruction. YMMV and I've never tried this, but people on the Miata list used to do this on a regular basis because their lifters were notorious for clogging.

Good luck.