Horrible tappet noises

So I just finished putting my 4G93 back together (Head gasket went). The head got a face and clean up, and she hit the service indicators.
Headtorque handled the work, bled the lifters for me, etc etc.
I had a spare set that I cleaned thoroughly, so I used those instead of my old ones (which were pretty sub par). And it sounded horrible. Like very single lifter was dead. So i pulled the rocker cover back ofd and checked them, none of them were squishy, but I figured I may have damaged them when I bled them, maybe I broke the check spring inside. So I put the set that the workshop had bled, in. That set was exactly the same.. So as a last ditch attempt, I bought a set of new Dynatec ones, put those in, and it still sounds absolutely horrible. I very gently pushed the check ball in a little with a small allen key, to bleed the dynatec ones, so I didnt damage them. But they're still making an absolute racket

Any ideas?

Have you let it run for a while afterwards? They do take a while to quiten down....

I went for a 20k drive with the first set, and an 80k drive with the second set. Ive only done 10k's with the new set that are currently in there. Do you think they will shut up eventually?

They take a while to shut up. The Meek lifters had a warning on them not to bleed them or poke anything into the bleed holes, they were pre oiled and I just dropped them in and started the car. Sounded absolutely ********* for about half an hour at idle, gradually got quieter but they are still a bit noisy now.

Mine rattle at start up, then they quieten down, but the rattle phases in and out at idle all the time

Took them all back out again and bled them in diesel as per the manual, then bled a small amount out so they weren't rock hard. It still rattles like a tin can full of ballbearings. Even after an hours drive.
Hopefully it just needs more time, and not more depth in the head oil supply channel..

Could that be an issue? The head has been faced down to the service limit indicators, but the oil feed depth was untouched. There was a fair amount of depth in there when i had a look at it.im using the factory MLS head gasket from mitsubishi by the way.

plenty of room in that oil channel.

Took it back to HeadTorque for an opinion on the noise. Their suggestion was valve/piston contact, leant me their bore scope to have a look. So I stuck it down the plug tubes when I got home, and discovered that each piston has a silver bar across the front and back (the raised skirt of the piston). So it looks like it's been kissing the quench area on the head... So it looks like I'm going to need to go back to a decompression head gasket. The one I put in there was MD322820, which is the MLS one for the CE SOHC 4G93.




No markings around the flycuts from valves. So hopefully theyre all ok still..

I have a cool one of those endoscopes. Plugs into android phone. Cant wait to check my plug hole with it

Lol ^ dont post the pics.

So are the pistons ok after that?

They are forged now...

id be tempted to pull a piston or two and check the top ring land hasnt closed tight on the top ring.