this is a noob question, so you will have to excuse me. I would like answers from people that have had this problem and how they went about fixing it, and/or how they would go about fixing it.

Not my car(yet)

The guy that i am buying this off of just completely did an over haul on the entire engine. The block is a brand new OEM short block pre-assembled from toyota. $3000 brand spanking new.

The head was sent out and redone to stock specs, Everything is brand new, all he did was bolt the head to block. It now currently has about 10k on it.

When i inspected the engine, i brought with me a stethascope so i could listen to what was going on. The noise is exactly what a valve tap would sound like. Not extreamily loud at idle, but you can most defentially hear it. i brought the RPM's up a little bit and it went away, or became more faint. but if they are steady at say 3k you can still hear the tapping. with the raising and lowering of the throttle it fades in and out.

So lets just say we are 100% sure the head has a valve tap, here are my questions.

What could cause a valve tap on a head with less then 11k miles?

if i pull the head off, and the valve(s) are bent or chipped, how do i go about replacing them? as in do i just buy brand new oem valves and install them? does anything need to be machined before i install the valves?

should i just say fcuk it and send the head back out to accept oversized valves and reaplce everything with new once again?

If i end up doing that, i might as well build the entire head, cams, valves, etc...?

i understand im going to have to replace the head bolts, so more then likely i'll go with a set of ARP's tourqed to 60ft's. as well as a new head gasket.

Basically if its a simple fix, like just replacing 1 valve, or all the valves and throwing the head back on, would it be more benifical to take the extra steps and build the head the right way with aftermarket?

Joe,

The first thing you should do is take the valve cover off and do a visual check. Then get feeler gauges, look up the procedure for checking valve clearances and check all of them to see if they are in spec.

If there is some other issue going on, I would ask dan to give you the name of the place and receipt for the head work. Call them up and explain the problem and see what type of warranty they have on their work.

>

Thats an execelent idea art, i didnt even think about giving them a call and seeing if they would back it up with some kind of warrenty, if indeed a valve is bent or chipped. I will defintally talk to dan, i know he has all the recipts for the work that was done. Its worth a shot.

and dan originally had a chipped valve.. it didnt make any noise, the car just ran like crap because the one cylinder didnt have compression due to the chip.

yea but the head was completely re-done, so it has to be from something else, thats what im not understanding

sometimes SHT happens...human error is very common these days.