07 Valley cover

[03catburban]

And just for the record if you decide to ever change out the AFM lifters you can't just run regular lifters with a AFM cam, the profile is different on those lobes and you'll have a permanent rough/mis at idle

 

[Dustin Jackson]

Good call man if the purpose was to just replace the valley cover gasket from the start, just do that and put it back together the way it was until you want to do a full delete.

 

[crownvic31]

the original one, not the smooth one?

The original went back on. I snipped the outer gasket and bought a new one.

 

[crownvic31]

So i just want to point out that every one goes through different experiences with everything. While a stuck lifter for somes is as simple as using transmission fluid to flush engine or using seafoam to using mystery oil and what ever esle is out there. Others will have to use the release tool or even remove the head. After wacking and wacking and wacking with the release tool and using brake cleaner in the oil valley to try and clean the lifter and wacking some more. I believe what did it for me was soaking the oil valley and the pushrod with some kind of lubricant which in my case what i had in hand was wd40 and let it soak over night. Then after a few hours which in my case was 22 hours later, i went at it again with the release tool and that did it for with ease. Of course after all this, please change your engine oil. I did use maybe 1/4 of a can of brake cleaner and of course some of the wd40. Dont know what kind of demage this can do to an engines internal but a fresh oil change after all this beating of the lifter should work well.

Also, before installing the vlom, i did add some engine oil into all of my valley hols just for ease of lubrication once restarting.

This was my experience and what worked for me.

Once again, thank you all for all your help. Greatly appreciative of all of you and your opinions and help.

 

[Geotrash]

So i just want to point out that every one goes through different experiences with everything. While a stuck lifter for somes is as simple as using transmission fluid to flush engine or using seafoam to using mystery oil and what ever esle is out there. Others will have to use the release tool or even remove the head. After wacking and wacking and wacking with the release tool and using brake cleaner in the oil valley to try and clean the lifter and wacking some more. I believe what did it for me was soaking the oil valley and the pushrod with some kind of lubricant which in my case what i had in hand was wd40 and let it soak over night. Then after a few hours which in my case was 22 hours later, i went at it again with the release tool and that did it for with ease. Of course after all this, please change your engine oil. I did use maybe 1/4 of a can of brake cleaner and of course some of the wd40. Dont know what kind of demage this can do to an engines internal but a fresh oil change after all this beating of the lifter should work well.

Also, before installing the vlom, i did add some engine oil into all of my valley hols just for ease of lubrication once restarting.

This was my experience and what worked for me.

Once again, thank you all for all your help. Greatly appreciative of all of you and your opinions and help.

So glad it worked out! Persistence pays off and we all learned some useful lessons from your experiences.

 

[crownvic31]

I just want to post a email reply from the guy on the youtube video that sells the release kit for the valves. I had explained to him my situation and how the release tool wasnt working at 1st. I explained to him how this all happened and also told him that my early build 2007 escalade had the afm/dod system installed feom factory but not active in ecu and this was his reply
"

Yeah that plate Definitely can't be put on there. Also, if It was an engine equipped with AFM from the factory It was also activated in the tune from the factory. The AFM system is too expensive for them to install mechanically without enabling it electronically. Just because you don't see it activate on the dash, doesn't mean it's disabled." Im not going to reply to his email but i still beleive that my afm system is not active.

 

[j91z28d1]

interesting.

being that it stuck, I would think it wasn't activating as well. I'm not sure how you'd find out.

was yours plugged in? not that you want to, but I wonder if you unplugged it, if it would set a light. if it did, it would lead me to think it was, if not.. definitely not.

I don't know if this is correct info, but I was looking up e38 ecm's the other day because my c6 uses it, and some of the older trucks/suv's showed they did too. the upgrade was the e76 I think it was, said to be basically the same os layout in hptuners but with some faster hardware, one commit I saw said it was to better handle the vvt and afm of the newer engines.

if the ecm split lines up with the installed but not active afm, if its because gm had meant to run it, but experienced some hiccups in late testing and just disabled it till the next year got the upgraded hardware. anyone know which ecm is which and when they changed?

 

[Dustin Jackson]

I would take the advice from the stuck lifter release kit guy with a grain of salt. I can’t grant any credibility to a guy selling a half baked solution to a well documented problem.

This lifter release guy is up there with the Range AFM disabler guy in my books, sure it gets you by but it’s not the proper way to fix the problem.

Full disclosure I did run the Range AFM disabler for a long time, lifters can still fail with AFM being disabled.

 

[crownvic31]

I would take the advice from the stuck lifter release kit guy with a grain of salt. I can’t grant any credibility to a guy selling a half baked solution to a well documented problem.

This lifter release guy is up there with the Range AFM disabler guy in my books, sure it gets you by but it’s not the proper way to fix the problem.

Full disclosure I did run the Range AFM disabler for a long time, lifters can still fail with AFM being disabled.

I had a diablo sport t1000 tuner and installed it before turning on the escalade. I did it had the option to disable the afm/dod which i did and i also changed my tire size as i have 35's and upped the rpms in park and drive. Escalade has been driving great since the lifter release trick.

 

[j91z28d1]

not that you'd do it.. but I wonder what would happen if you activated afm on a year that had it all installed but disabled from the factory.

that would be super interesting.

I'm pretty sure yours would stick at this point, so not recommend. but be a interesting experiment.

 

[j91z28d1]

I would take the advice from the stuck lifter release kit guy with a grain of salt. I can’t grant any credibility to a guy selling a half baked solution to a well documented problem.

This lifter release guy is up there with the Range AFM disabler guy in my books, sure it gets you by but it’s not the proper way to fix the problem.

Full disclosure I did run the Range AFM disabler for a long time, lifters can still fail with AFM being disabled.

to be fair, gm uses plastic trays to keep lifters from spinning. that's not a 100% fix for this. non afm lifters fail too.

you'd could try these.. but they are meant for racing.




there's a reason why you never had valve train issues in a Gen 1/2. they used steel plates to keep the lifter from spinning.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

@crownvic31 I think in your circumstance you’ll be ok but usually when there is a lifter failure, AFM or non-AFM, there is a reason that the lifter had a failure and once the lifter starts bouncing on the cam little pits and dents in the lifter and cam could cause it to be more prone to lifter failure in the future.

What I’m getting at is lifter release tool doesn’t address the cause of the lifter failure. Like @j91z28d1 said one of the causes for lifter failure are the plastic trays getting loose and not holding the lifters in line. But since your situation is unique and you hopefully fall under the “exception” category.

 

[crownvic31]

not that you'd do it.. but I wonder what would happen if you activated afm on a year that had it all installed but disabled from the factory.

that would be super interesting.

I'm pretty sure yours would stick at this point, so not recommend. but be a interesting experiment.

Maybe when im ready to do the complete delete i can give it a try. But i am not touching that for sure right now.

@crownvic31 I think in your circumstance you’ll be ok but usually when there is a lifter failure, AFM or non-AFM, there is a reason that the lifter had a failure and once the lifter starts bouncing on the cam little pits and dents in the lifter and cam could cause it to be more prone to lifter failure in the future.

What I’m getting at is lifter release tool doesn’t address the cause of the lifter failure. Like @j91z28d1 said one of the causes for lifter failure are the plastic trays getting loose and not holding the lifters in line. But since your situation is unique and you hopefully fall under the “exception” category

My truck was running great. Just had to replace that valley gasket and thought that the flat valley would do. The fact that i only ran the escalade for 3 mins at most after the case, i beleive ill be ok. Saw a video on youtube after i had my issue where someone tried doing the same thing and the guy said BAD IDEA. If i would had found that video before i did what i did, i would had not gotten into this mess.

 

[crownvic31]

Found it

 

[crownvic31]

So Its been a month since I unstuck my collapsed lifter due to the wrong valley cover install. I am now on my 3rd engine oil change and let me just say this escalade is running extremally smooth and quite. Reason for the 3rd oil change is because I changed the oil right after fixing the lifter issue due to the amount of brake cleaner and WD40 I pure down the oil valley to help and release the lifter. I added 1/4th of a quart of trans fluid to clean even more with that oil change. Ran it for 3.5 weeks and just last week replaced the engine oil and filter once again with Mobil 1 5W40 Full Syn oil and the high performance ACdelco oil filter that are recommended for corvettes part # UPF48R. I did add some trans fluid to engine oil this time but just half of 1/4th.

So far everything is running great.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

Good update man

 

[crownvic31]

Hello all, just want to give a quick update on this. Escalade is still running strong. Black bear tune and all. Havent had an issue. I do my regular 3 month oil change. Escalade is ran pretty much 7 days a week unless im driving my crown vic, 40 miles a day.

Just wanted to throw this out there.