I have an 85 Toyota pickup with 145,000 miles on it, I’m the second owner but it did sit for a little over a year and needed a new head gasket. It still ran alright but burnt a little oil and wouldn’t start too easy after it sat sometimes. Last winter I went through it and rebuilt the whole top end. New head, valves, rocker arms, timing chain, timing chain sprockets/metal guides/tensioner and cover, water pump, oil pump, radiator, exhaust manifold and the fuel pump. All was good until last week I could hear a knock that wasn’t constant but has progressively gotten worse. At first I thought it was something with the valves but I checked them and it still ran smooth like before. The timing chain guides aren’t broken from what I can see with the valve cover off. If the tensioner failed with metal guides would it create enough slop to knock loudly on them? I can’t think of anything else it could be. At idle the knock seems to be at a faster rpm than the valves.

Im not the most mechanically inclined and I would love some input. I would like it hear what you might think before I take the timing cover off and throw a new tensioner on it. Thanks!!

 

Does the knock go away after the engine warms up?
Have you pulled the plug wires one at a time to see if it is associated with a certain cylinder?
There is a 22re piston slap noise many of us live with that behaves this way.
I would try running it with the valve cover off to see if that sheds any light.

 

You do that, you'll be covered in oil in seconds. My friend did that one night out at work. Oil EVERYWHERE. We all learned a valuable lesson, although only he was leaning over it and got thoroughly coated with oil. MOST distressing!

Just thought you would like to know...
Pat☺

 

i’ve done it before on v8s. The key is to have the idle low. On 22re that would be difficult to do and i would expect the chain to throw oil from the top sprocket. I wonder if fabbing a small cover from sheet metal or maybe even cardboard with aluminum foil would allow you to see/hear the chain running. I’d try but my own truck is way too clean under the hood.

 

I'm not exactly sure just where the spray of oil came from, but it DID look like the front of the engine. May well have been the chain throwing oil around, but it was a LOT of oil, under a fair amount of pressure. It was enough to spray the ceiling of a 2 story, open garage. It took a few days of work to get all the oil off the walls, floor, ceiling, and the owner of the truck. Boy was he MAD.
At least he could use the steamcleaner to clean out the truck's engine compartment...
What made it the most hilarious was that he had owned Toyota trucks for years. Oh, yeah. He was also the boss of all the mechanics on our site. HE had to clean it all up. No one was going to do it for him, I tell you that! We ALL, that were there watching him were laughing hysterically too, which just made him madder.The madder he got, the more we laughed. It was a feedback effect

Good luck!
Pat☺