"The" HEMI TICK: Explained Clearly and Accurately by a Professional Mechanic

The Hemi Tick is a phrase that inspires concern and fear in the hearts of many who own a Hemi-based vehicle or are considering purchasing one, but what is the truth about the Hemi Tick? Hey guys, welcome to turn it back on now if you don't. Meet me, my name is Sky and I have been with Dodge Tech for over 12 years so I am very familiar with the Hemi product. Now primarily my channel is Hemi based, so if that's something you're interested in, consider subscribing now, of course. In this video we are covering the

hemi

tick

, which I think is our first step towards where we are going wrong.

Because? Because it is titled Hemi

tick

, which makes you think that there is only one

hemi

tick now and that can be very confusing because Hemi engines, like many engines, make several different ticking noises, some of them are absolutely normal and are not something What to worry about, but when you hear that phrase, the hemi ticking, and you hear my engine ticking, does that mean I have the ticking? tick there's a lot of uncertainty and there's a lot of worry a lot of people are wondering how much money it's going to cost me to fix this so that's something I hope to focus on in this video. about all the different types of noises that the hemi engine can potentially make and I'm going to talk about what those possible solutions are, how much it would cost to repair them and also which ones are perfectly normal now, first of all, I want to discuss the noises that are absolutely normal for everyone the hemis that exist.

I've done a lot of mvps new vehicle prep and a lot of hemi engines over the last decade that come out and when you let a hemi engine sit for a couple at least a few days and you go out and start it up, it's going to rattle a little on initial startup. , that's a little bit of lifter noise and that's 100% normal, there's nothing wrong, your lifters aren't failing, they're not going to. fail, it is a normal condition if you look at the lifters themselves, they are a hydraulic lifter, which means that at the back there is a small plunger in which this section is filled with oil and that provides a little bit of clearance for the pushrod goes up and down when you let this thing sit for a couple of days, the oil tends to drain a little from the back here, so you have direct metal to metal contact between the pushrod and the lifter so soon as you start that engine before it can build up that oil pressure you're going to hear a little bit of that metal on metal noise until these things pump oil and then the noise goes away like I said it only lasts a couple of seconds or so which again, this is a perfectly normal condition, there is nothing to worry about.

Our next normal condition has to do with the injectors. The injectors on a hemi engine are incredibly loud, they are actually quite loud. These are all an electrical solenoid that is activating. and it shuts off very quickly to supply that fuel to the engine, that plunger going up and down makes a ticking noise, these injectors, for whatever reason, are pretty loud, so when you hear the engine running, especially if you have the exhaust original, which really silences the engine. Lean over the engine bay and you hear this: It's the injectors and again it's a perfectly normal noise.

Now this phrase inspires such fear and concern that some people have even asked me about the noise the engine makes after turning it off. off now, if you don't know, this is because the exhaust is cooling, it's contracting and it makes a ticking noise, so it's very consistent, like a ticking, ticking or tinkling type noise, but they're concerned say: do I have the hemi tick, I have no idea, so it's just to let you know how much fear this phrase inspires in people, but again, that's also another completely normal condition, any engine will essentially do that after you turn it off when it's hot. , you will hear that tick. noise as the exhaust contracts, next we are going to talk about a ticking noise which is not as common but is something that happens now.

Earlier we talked about that initial noise from the lifter when starting that only lasts two or three seconds, well if you have the same rattling type noise on a cold start and it lasts a good couple of minutes, then you could have a failed lifter hydraulic part. Now I have good news on this: it's not a catastrophic failure where essentially this plunger is here. it's just bouncing up and down because it's no longer maintaining the oil pressure here properly, so you've got a lot of valve lash, that's what you're hearing, you're hearing that pushrod rattling up and down inside the rear of this lifter, now the good thing The new thing is that you are not necessarily damaging any other components when this goes wrong, it is a pain because to replace it you have to remove the cylinder heads from the engine to get to these lifters and replace them, but to a large extent those are the only parts you'll have to replace, you'll replace the lifter head gaskets and of course since it's already there you'll want to do some valve cover gaskets, things like that, but overall it's more work. type of repair for what is a hugely financial repair, now again this is a bit of a rare condition, honestly we don't see lifters fail like this all that often now I can hear you telling me that now all I hear about are failed hemi lifters that It's a different condition and we'll get to that here in a couple of minutes as an idea of ​​what you can expect to pay for something like this if you were to take this to a dealership to have it repaired.

For this problem of a failed lift hydraulic part, you're probably looking at around two thousand dollars, which is certainly not cheap but not very expensive either. Now you might be wondering what we can do to prevent it. Well, the reality is that there is nothing you can do to avoid this. This is just a factory part and at some point it could fail, like I said, it's not that common, we don't see it very often, but it happens over and over again. It's identifiable because it only happens on cold start, as soon as the vehicle builds up enough oil pressure over the course of a couple of minutes, it will actually fill this hydraulic portion back up with oil and the noise will go away, lessen that whiplash. there and the noise will go away, so that is an identifier to know that it was a hydraulic problem and not a problem with the lift roller.

Now as to which vehicle with the hemi engine, this would really affect almost any of them basically. Any engine from 2003 to current could have this fault, but again, it's not something worth thinking about or even worrying about because it's so rare. Now, just the opposite of that, let's jump right into what I consider. the most common hemi tick out there, so this next hemi tick is one that I'm sure many of you have already experienced and in fact, it is one that is often misunderstood as being actually very expensive when in fact it is quite simple. and a much cheaper repair, I'm talking about the exhaust leaks that happen on these extraordinarily common things now, specifically what's happening right on the hemi engine.

Factory exhaust manifolds are a cast steel design, while cylinder heads are aluminum, this means they will expand. and contract at different speeds. Also, these cast collectors are very, very thick, which means they retain a lot of heat, which means that when you go through enough heat cycles, they will eventually warp a little. What happens is this causes these rear bolts to break or me. I have seen sometimes the front bolts break as well but most of the time these rear bolts break and then an exhaust leak develops at the back of the manifold so this noise is very prominent on start up. cold and then as the cylinder head heats up and as the exhaust manifold heats up, they contract, they both expand and expand to where there is no more space, so you lose that exhaust leak, so the exhaust noise tic is no longer present again, it's very strong, very noticeable and that's something that I find most people think, oh.

No I have the hemi tick when the reality is you simply have an exhaust leak and it's actually a pretty simple repair to remove these manifolds and replace them. In fact, I have a whole video about it if you want to watch it. The entire repair process is shown right here. If you took this to a dealer by side you'd probably pay around 500 to fix it, which of course still isn't cheap, but it's a lot cheaper than the next hemi tick. Now I have good news about this particular form of hemi tick and that is that it is actually very easy to diagnose even by someone with no

mechanic

al experience whatsoever, so if you take a look here at the exhaust manifold, you will notice that it has this heat shield bolted to the outside. from the manifold, this heat shield is bolted on using those bolts on the back and front of the exhaust manifold and those are the bolts that break off so all you have to do is when the vehicle is cold get out and access these shields heat shields, reach in there with your fingers and pull on that heat shield a little bit if it feels nice and tight and there's little to no movement you'll know that's not your problem, but generally if you reach for the back of these heat shields. and you pull it and it moves about a half inch, pretty clear you have some broken bolts there now, on some vehicles these heat shields will be easier to access than others, the 1500 and 2500 are by far the easiest to use.

In fact, because you can go through the fender through the splash guard and directly to the heat shield, so you can literally do this without even opening the hood of your vehicle, a process as simple as now, on the other hand, for the cars. a much more difficult process because the engine is pretty tight in there, so getting your hand in there to get to those heat shields may be a little more difficult, but definitely not impossible. Grand Cherokees and Commanders are the same situation. very tight and there's no access to the fender on those vehicles, it's actually a solid bulkhead there so you can't get through it all, which is a little unfortunate, but if you can slide your hands up the side of the valve cover here and just get to where those heat shields are and again my recommendation would be to do it on the back of the manifold because they are by far the most common to break so have as much leverage as possible by reaching to the back of that heat shield. and just pull a little, you know you're not going to pull as hard as you can, just pull a little, you'll feel very easily if it has too much movement or not.

Now I talked about one of the problems. With these cast collectors it's how thick they are and how much heat they retain well. I brought a 1500 ram manifold here and these are the same for the 2500 as well, but I just wanted to show you exactly how thick these things are, it's really a little ridiculous when you think about it, I mean look this thing is just a beast, like this which you can certainly imagine how much heat these things retain to get them through enough heat cycles and it's not entirely surprising that they break those screws. especially when you think about the fact that with how thick these flanges are, those bolts are a pretty decent size, so you have this long length made up of these different metals made up of this really thick flange that retains a ton of heat, yeah , something inevitable now.

What can be done to avoid this problem? A lot of people will just say, "I'm going to go ahead and get rid of this factory hardware and upgrade to some aftermarket hardware and then that seems to fix the problem because generally, about every 30,000 miles is when you'll see these bolts break. It's worse on Ram trucks. I'm not exactly sure why Grand Cherokees and Challenger Chargers will still do it, but not on the scale that Ram trucks will, for whatever reason, they are very susceptible to it. This, I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the design of your manifold or what exactly is the case, but we see that it's probably a three to one ratio between trucks and cars, now it's another option that many people have.

They decided to do is change to a set of short headers, some aftermarket headers and the difference is that you have a much thinner flange on the header, the tubes themselves, the pipes have a much thinner wall and all that together means that It doesn't retain heat like these cast collectors do, so you don't get the expansion and contraction of factory collectors. Plus you're upgrading to different hardware when you put headers in there anyway so that seems to alleviate the problem and there are several short headers on the market that bolt directly to the factory exhaust so honestly if you're going to pay 500 dollars per side to fix it, it almost makes sense financially to upgrade to the head set while you're As far as what range of hemi vehicles this affects, I'd say as early as 2005 is when I've seen them and then all the way through I'd say 2019, no I have seen ifSome of the 2020 and newer trucks have this problem.

I don't know if it's just that they haven't had enough mileage yet to be sure or if they may have changed the exhaust manifolds or the hardware itself. I'm not sure, but I know at least through 2019, especially if you have a ram truck, you're probably considering doing this about every 30,000 miles or so now as a workaround when you're fixing this issue. Chrysler offers updated hardware to prevent this from happening again, the problem is that it is quite expensive and many people opt for just the standard hardware because they don't want to pay extra money now, as I'm sure you can see from what I'm talking about not There are a lot of things that can be done in terms of preventative maintenance other than changing the hardware before it actually happens and now we come to the big dog, the one that is more commonly known as the hemi tick, this is the big boy, this is the one that is Now It's going to cost more money, what specifically are we talking about?

We're talking about cam and lifter failures, so essentially whether it's the cam that fails or the lifter that fails first, it's a chicken or egg scenario, it doesn't really matter. You ended up having to replace them both, but essentially the needle bearings in your lifters are failing and moving up and down, and after that happens and they start eating the cam lobe. Now you keep doing this more and more until that cam load becomes flatter and less pointy and this means it will start to misfire on that cylinder which is usually when people start to notice it, why don't they notice it before they is it a hemi tick?

Ah, but here's the difference and this is a great identifier of if you have this particular hemi tick, this hemi tick is not present on cold start. This is a ticking noise that you will only notice after the vehicle is fully up to operating temperature and at idle you may hear a very soft ticking noise usually, if it is really loud you will hear a louder tick but usually, if initially goes wrong, you will hear a soft tick. I think it almost sounds like a ping pong ball bouncing around inside the engine because it's almost bumpy.

The noise isn't a constant ting ting ting noise either, it's more like a ting ting ting, I know that's a great reproduction of it, but essentially that's how you can tell if you're dealing with a lifter issue versus all these other noises of tics. Again, the vehicle has to be at operating temperature and it has to be idling because as soon as you come out of idle and start revving the engine, the noise will go away and then you'll be thinking, well, no, no. I really don't think you have a problem because the noise goes away, that's not true, it's just the harmonics of the engine shifting so you can't hear it anymore even though it's still happening now, how much will it cost to fix?

The real big question here is that I have been telling people for a long time that if you go to a dealership to have this done, it will probably cost you around 4500 to do this job, definitely not cheap. That's why people are so scared about the cost involved, but again, it's just this specific problem that's going to cost that amount of money to fix. The other problems are much simpler and don't cost as much. So what is it exactly? is involved in repairing this particular problem, well this is the most important one, you will still have to remove those cylinder heads to replace those lifters and you will also have to remove the timing cover to take the cam.

Take the shaft out and replace it and I'm talking specifically in the case of 6.4 liter engines in trucks, only if the cam lobe has worn enough and enough metal has gotten inside, Chrysler won't warranty it unless to replace it. the entire engine at that point because they have a special auxiliary engine oil cooler and that metal debris gets trapped inside that cooler and will actually go through the engine, so if you just put a camshaft and lifters on the 6.4 truck engines , many times Many times that metal will find its way back into the engine and ruin it after you've done that replacement, so again Chrysler says no, at that point you have to put a whole new engine in there, what man is really then ? the cost really starts to skyrocket so 6.4 truck engines are a bit more of a tough situation now, how do you know how much metal has gone through the engine to make that decision?

Well I have good news for you, this is actually quite simple, what you need to do is remove the intake manifold and on the back of the timing cover in the valley of the engine there is a solenoid, that solenoid is the solenoid vvt or variable valve timing solenoid. What is done is a single 10 millimeter bolt. which holds that solenoid in place, remove that solenoid and then look at the metal screen, if there is a lot of metal on that screen, you are going to buy a motor, however, if the screen is practically free of metal debris, you can escape.

Now just replacing the camshaft and lifters, this is a good strategy to do on 5.7 engines as well, but especially 6.4 truck engines. Now the question everyone is looking for is the answer: How can I prevent this from happening? Well, I can talk to you. a little bit about some of the issues that really seem to make the problem worse and one of them is very poor oil changes. I see this a lot. People like to go 10,000 miles between oil changes. Don't do it, it's a bad decision. The oil seems to break down faster than that and I personally wouldn't go more than 5000 miles between my oil changes, even with full synthetic oil, I'm just not that comfortable with it and want to make sure that oil isn't limiting. factor within the engine now the next important factor is high idle time specifically and I'm not talking about if you let your vehicle idle for 15 minutes here and 20 minutes there, no I'm talking about you letting it idle for too long . of an hour a day that seems to affect things a lot, so on fleet vehicles, specifically police vehicles, which have really high downtimes, we typically see almost a hundred percent failure rate with their lifts on. those situations because you have a combination of factors that you have super high idle times and then since they are not actually driving the vehicle they are just running it, they don't change the oil for a long time until the mileage says they should replace it, without However, Chrysler has released specific information. especially for fleet vehicles, it recommends changing the oil based on engine hours instead of mileage if you are going to idle the vehicle for a long time, so that is also an important factor now for me specifically, I have been thinking a lot . about this and you can find more information about this on my channel, but for me, if the problem is aggravated at idle, that means that when the oil pressure is at its absolute lowest point, that makes the problem a little bit worse, so I have been searching. modify or install a factory part to increase idle oil pressure and if you want to see my other videos on that go ahead and look here hopefully that will also give you some good information now quickly.

I'd like to talk a little bit about the misconceptions with this elevator issue. Firstly, there is a very popular theory that the problem is caused by not enough splash lubrication coming out of the crankshaft to splatter the cam loads and that is what I would like to point out. A couple of things: one, they don't design engines the same way they did in the '60s, there have been some progressions when it comes to the front end, and secondly, there is a much more complicated oil pressure system with the hemi engine which I

explained

much more

clearly

. in this video here, so if you go watch, I show you the entire journey of the engine oil and you'll understand why that particular theory doesn't work.

Now, the next mistake that people have is that they think it is like that. only the mds lifters are causing this problem now the mds is the multi displacement system that shuts down four cylinders for cruising situations things like that to improve mileage so they think well the mds is the whole problem its just the mds lifters that are failing That's not true either, there are manual versions of these cars that never came with mds and in fact the manual versions of these cars have non mds lifters on all sides, they will fail too, in fact if you go look at my 2010 Challenger build, I specifically have this video right here.

If you watch that video you will see that it was a manual vehicle and it was still experiencing lift roller failures. Now the third mistake people have is that they think Chrysler fixed this problem. back in 2016 when they redesigned the risers, I now have a community post on my channel showing the difference between the old style risers and the new style risers, but I would like to

clearly

point out that they didn't actually fix this issue when they redesigned the risers. I have still done a lot of cam and lifter work on 2016 2017 2018 vehicles so the lifters didn't really correct this condition.

Now another thing people like to say is why don't you go ahead and upgrade to the Hellcat lifts that are there and whatnot. I will solve your problem well. I would like to point out to you that the so-called Hellcat lifter has the exact same part number as a non-MDS lifter on your standard RT vehicle. There is literally nothing special about a Hellcat lift. just redesigned non mds lifter from 2016 onwards now there is something else people say if i get rid of my mds system completely that might solve this problem now that might be indirectly true and the reason why i say that It's because I talked in the previous video. about where i showed the lubrication path through the hemi when you remove those mds solenoids you are getting full oil pressure in the lifter ports at all times now this means you will have to change your mds lifters to standard lifters otherwise .

If you just remove the solenoids you will be pushing all the oil pressure to those lifters and they will all collapse which is not what you want to do so again it is an expensive feature because you will have to remove them. cylinder heads to replace all your lifters with standard lifters and also remove those solenoids and also install a tune in there to shut down the mds system so not very cost effective. I still think the best solution in my opinion right now is if I have a 2009 and newer hemi to upgrade to the Hellcat oil pump which is a direct bolt on fit and is pretty cost effective now if you have a pre 2009 hemi engine.

Melling It offers a high volume oil pump which I think is excellent. solution and I'm going to be testing both pumps very soon on my channel so if that's something you're interested in again please subscribe now, specifically talking about the lifter problem where the needle bearings fail, what hemi engines are happening. from 2009 onwards to at least 2019 now, I don't know if that's happening to any of the 2020 and newer trucks, it could just be because we haven't had enough time to see them work yet because I don't believe the part number on the lift has changed on these newer trucks, but at least as of 2009, those are the ones that will see these failures on the roller lifts.

Now there are always some people who say, well I had one that was older than the one that had a roller lifter failure, well of course there will be outliers here and there, but in general what we are really seeing is 2009 and later are the ones that are most susceptible to this problem. I'd also like to talk for a moment about what exactly solves this problem now? When you have this problem, it usually takes at least 80,000 miles. Obviously some people have had this problem before, especially if they have high idle times, but it usually takes around 80,000 more miles for this.

The problem will develop, so if you then replace a couple of parts and then in 30,000 miles you haven't had a repeat concern, you can't exactly say that what you did fixed the problem. I do not think it's fair? A lot of people seem to want to replace their cam with an aftermarket cam, replace the lifters with aftermarket lifters and say, look, the problem is fixed, the reality is you haven't had enough time in the vehicle to prove that's the case. the case and there are thousands of other factors that are also involved. Are you driving the vehicle differently after you have made these repairs than before you made these repairs?

Are you doing oil changes more frequently after these repairs than before these repairs? too many variables to specifically say this is what actually fixed the problem.So will we ever know the real reason or source behind why this happens? I sincerely doubt it. There are too many factors. There are too many ways that people. There is something that can change the equation, so all we can do is do our best to prevent things from happening. Now a question a lot of people ask me, they say what aftermarket lifts should I go with and I always say look, the problem took 80-100,000 miles to fix. appear first, that's not a bad track record, stick with the OEM lifters and you'll get at least that from them the second time around, especially if you upgrade to a Hellcat oil pump or something, that's absolutely the direction I'd go , I understand that these factory lifts are certainly not cheap.

I still think they are the best option. I've had too many bad experiences with aftermarket lifts, specifically the cheap ones that will vibrate from day one. I'm sure there are some aftermarket lifters that are just as good as the originals, but I don't have much experience with them. What I do have experience with is that people are cheap and buy lifters from Amazon and they rattle like crazy, so they spend all this money to take their whole motor apart, put these cheap lifters on there, put it back together completely, whatever. beeps on every start up, hugely frustrating, waste the money and just put some OEM lifters back in there and you'll be good to go, how much do I think clearly about OEM lifters?

But how much do other people think about OEM lifts? I want to tell you a little story here, so I was living in Texas and I was living. in a town called Liberty Hill, which is about 20 minutes from Texas Speed ​​and Performance headquarters, now the dealership I was working at there was sending Texas Speed ​​and Performance OEM lifters for all of their tree kits. cams, I'm talking hundreds of OEM lifter lifter assemblies for their camshaft kits that show you what they think of them because they understand that they are a good, solid, reliable lifter, so again my recommendation remains with OEM, especially I want to say that I really appreciate you for spending.

Your time to watch this video. I hope you learned something and we'll be doing a lot more of this in the future, so see you next time on Reigned.