Hello,
Just finished replacing a cracked head on a 97 2.3 with a fresh reman head. The reman came with the cam, lifters, and rockers installed. I lubed all of the cam lobes with assembly lube prior to putting the cover on. I lined up the cam and oil pump marks= triangle on cam and diamond on pump (noted that marks were about 1/8" advanced on both the cam and pump pulleys compared to the mark on the crank) I finished putting the intake plugs, wires, vacuum lines, the emissions stuff etc. back together. I decided to test fire it and see what happened.It cranked about 3 times and fired running smoothly but with alot of clatter from the lifters. I ran it for 3 seconds and killed it- due to not having a radiator. Is it normal to have some clatter from a new head on initial startup?

Thanks,
Derek

i had some caltter in mine for a while but im not sure if u have the hydrolic lifters or not. if u do it will take a while for them to get primed(about a minute or two)

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1983 ford ranger. 2.3l . 2wd. .4 speed manual. 2bbl weber. glasspak.

It's not uncommon to have some slight lifter tick for a short period of time after swapping a head. Also if it only ran for 3 seconds it may have just been reaching full oil pressure in the head and obviously without full oil pressure some noise will be heard

Should prime the pump and get the lifters up to pressure if they are new or sitting around a while.

Ok thanks, It is the hydraulic lifters. I thought the same thing; that the oil just didn't have time to make it up there. I probably should have turned the oil pump with my drill for a while before i put the timing belt on. Ill quit worrying about it. thanks for your help!