So my mustang started having a ticking noise the oil pan had a leak so I fixed that. Then put new spark plugs in and the engine developed a slapping noise. We put in new lifters and the left side and still the same slapping. It seems to becoming from the third piston (from the front) but I’m not sure.
It is a 2012 gt 5.0
any ideas?

 

When did the noise start? before the oil leak repair? Before spark plug replacement? What do you have for miles?

 

The noise started after the spark plug change. Theres about 80k
The ticking started before the oil leak. thats what alerted me to it. this is my fiancé car and she told me it was ticking so I looked and it was about 6qt low of oil. So I put the oil in and then made the oil leak repair and an oil change.

 

this is a recording of it.

 

Welcome to the forums!

Remembering that I'm waaaay over here on all this... here I go:


Um... something is not adding up in my brain... Sorry, there's a timeline issue. I'm thinking there was an oil leak before the ticking, because...

*listens to audio file*

Good lord that's horrendous. That's not a ticking. That's a knocking.

Now I could be mishearing, but man alive that does NOT sound good. If it is top side, it's gonna be a bent valve, bad follower, bad lash adjuster, bad cam, a too long/failed miserably spark plug... or what I'd more suspect, a bad cam pedestal due to oil starvation and the cam is knocking about in the pedestal. I mean if it's centered on cylinder 3 or 7 (right or left side respectively) then those are your main culprits up top. If it's the spark plug being wonky that'd be bad as that also has knocked the piston about and/or sent bits into the cylinder... but let's move on.

It could also be misleading as the knock sound could be travelling up from the crank, through the rod, wrist pin, and piston to get up there where it's basically a sound chamber in the cylinder. I fear it's that, you've got a spun bearing, or destroyed one.

In any event, however long the thing was low on oil to the tune of 2 quarts in the system out of 8, yeah... that's probably gonna be a new head or a new engine. Or rebuilding thereto, whichever.

If you don't/can't do that kind of work, or don't/can't do the diagnostics to figure it out, you will need a mechanic. Sorry. You might want to see if you can source a teeeensy camera that'll go in the spark plug hole and see if you can see damage from the inside.

There's a few other things that may come into play such as jumped timing or bad TiVCT or a computer that's got it in for cylinder 3 or 7, but... yeah. That audio sounds horribly bad to me.

I dunno if that helps or not, but I do wish you good luck with it, let us know what happens next.

 

Thanks for the info. My buddy is a mechanic so where going to take a second. Ill have to see if I can find a small camera.