Pretty much Im trying to find out what noise I'm hearing from underneath the rocker cover. I will say it's a louder than normal tick but not near as bad as like a rod knock. I was thinking maybe the valve need adjusting but I was reading somewhere that they are hydrolic and do not have manual adjustment. The Mini runs fine it's just that the ticking is bothering me because I know something isn't as good as it needs to be.

 

From which side of the valve cover?

Possible it is just bad valve lash, or could be timing chain tensioner. What type of maintenance history does the car have and how many miles?

Motor On!

 

Car owners have been hearing "ticking" ever since hydraulic zero-lash lifters made an appearance.

Mike Miller, who writes a tech article for Bimmer Magazine (and something for Roundel Magazine) even wrote about this some years ago.

Back when BMW was moving from solid lifters, which required periodic adjustment, to hydraulic lifters with no adjustment necessary, in talking to BMW techs he said something to the effect the BMW techs were not in favor of the hydraulic lifters, said owners could pay to have the mechanical valves adjusted every once in a while to quiet the ticking or pay them to replace hydraulic lifters every once in a while when they became noisy.

Now I have no experience with BMW engines and their lifters but I have owned a number of other car brands and all but the 1st one have had hydraulic lifters and I've never had any problems with noisy lifters.

I like to point out that the engine is an internal combustion reciprocating engine and this means among other things that there is a lot of hardware inside the engine going back and forth, up and down, things opening and closing, spark plugs sparking, and so on.

The engine generates a real cacophonous of racket, some of which will be heard as ticking.

Is the oil level good?

Is the oil "fresh"?

Oil over the miles and time gets contaminated and the engine becomes noisier as a result. It is amazing how quiet a modern engine (at least the ones I'm familiar with) gets with fresh oil.

Is the oil the proper type of oil, the right viscosity for where you live and drive?

If none of the above not much you can do on your driveway. My advice is to be sure you know how to recreate the noise, or under what circumstances it appears, and have a Mini tech give a listen. If he believes the noise is not normal he'll try to pinpoint where the noise is coming from and with this info then be able to offer up some high confidence diagnosis as to what is going on.

 

I know it's not the chain tensioner because I just replaced that, the guides, cam sprocket and chain itself haha so that's all new and the noise is directly under the valve cover. I understand there should be some ticking but this is noticeably louder than what it should be

 

The fuel injectors can make a ticking sound, it is normal.

 

how loud can they get?

 

This "!!!!!!!!!" loud is max, and this "!" is min.

The hydraulic "lifters" are built into the rocker arms. They are miniature.

 

I have a tick. It's from the valve head. 04 mini cooper base model. R53.

I can't see an adjusting "bolt" in my mechanics manual for my specific vehicle. The book almost convinces me that it's a valve issue because i have excessive oil consumption. I have a youtube video of the sound. there are a couple comments i put as well.