I need help trying to figure out what I did wrong. Recently done a valve seal replacement on a 2007 5.3. Read all the procedure for torquing the rocker arm bolts back down and now after starting the truck has a horrendous noise from under the valve covers. Everything appears to be correct and nothing feels too loose or tight. Sound like a loud lifter tick but on both sides. Any ideas?

 

And what procedure did you use?

 

What I had looked up said to rotate the engine until both valves were up and torque them down. Rotate and repeat on each valve. I did that for each valve individually and checked them all about 3 times before putting it all back together. I tried to make sure each one had no tension before I tightened

 

Not that you did anything wrong, butt, the valve spring tension makes less than 2 ft-lbs of torque difference, even if it opens the valve all the way. Probably less than 1 ft-lb. Which, the torque on those bolts isn't critical anyway, to begin with; 22 ft-lbs (actually, 21.7) is just the conversion from the "standard" in-the-absence-of-any-other-concern torque for that size bolt (30 N-m) to SAE units. So whatever is wrong, it's not that.

Check to make sure you have it put back together right. Like, check the rocker stand piece for being flipped backwards, or something simple and inconspicuous like that.

 

I'll pull them all back off again tomorrow and try again. I've done this on old school small blocks before and never had it go from no noise to sounding like a rattle when running. I'll try to update if I find anything

 

Well not exactly sure what happened, but after taking the valve covers off and checking everything while turning the engine over, nothing seemed loose. Went back through with the torque wrench to 30 ft/lbs and barely got any turn on the rocker arm bolts. Put it all back together and now no noise at all. I'd assume maybe the factory lifters had collapsed a little bit and just took a while to pump back up? Not sure, but either way it's back and running good again