Hello friends,

I´ve realized that I need to go over the rocker arms and the hydraulic elements on my 1984 500 SEL. The reason is ofcourse that I have a tapping noice and its slowly getting worse. There is no tapping noise when the car is cold (standing overnight). The tapping noise follows the frequence of the rocker arms and with my stethoscope I identified it to be on the front of the passenger side cylinder bank. Yesterday and also today I have been in there to see if I could identify were the problem lies and I also did a lot of reading of different posts to get all the info I could: There is no obvious play between any of the rockers or hydraulic elements.

I´m fairly sure that this is a valvetrain noise since I pulled the ignition wires off one by one on that cylinder bank with the engine running without any change to the noise.

From my reading up on the forum and my digging under the valve cover there is no obvious rocker arm or hydraulic element that I can identify as the source of the noise.

I realized that I need the proper tools to determine if this is the rocker arms or the HLC:s - so could any friendly soul from the list provide me with the part number for the special valve spring compressor used as well as the measurement device used to determine the preload of the HLC:s.

Ofcourse I also would highly appreciate any input on how to troubleshoot this tapping noise.

Many thanks,

Mikael Westerberg
1984 500 SEL
Vanersborg, Sweden

Anyone familiar with this one?

Många tack på förhand/ Mikael

Anyone with info in the part numbers?

Thanks/ Mikael

I used a Napa 3075 valve spring compressor that was approx $60. It worked great!

I got both my spring compressor and pre-load measurer from Assenmacher Specialty Tools (AST). They are on the web.

__________________
Chuck Taylor
Falls Church VA
'66 200, '66 230SL, '96 SL500. Sold: '81 380SL, '86 300E, '72 250C, '95 C220, 3 '84 280SL's '90 420SEL, '72 280SE, '73 280C, '78 280SE, '70 280SL, '77 450SL, '85 380SL, '87 560SL, '85 380SL, '72 350SL, '96 S500 Coupe