Tapping Noise

Last month I changed the oil and filter in my 1992 Buick Century with 264000 miles. I used a name brand (Citco) of the correct oil, 10W-30, API Service SN. I bought the oil on sale at a local supermarket. Now, I hear a loud tapping sound from the engine, especially when it’s cold. It dosen’t sound as loud after warm-up. The tapping increases in frequency when I rev up the engine. I don’t intend to keep this old car much longer, but is this problem an immediate concern? Could it be a valve problem? Could it Could I have bought some bad oil with a conterfeit label? Other than this noise, the car runs okay.

Might be your oil filter, some folks have had this symptom with lower cost filters. With this many miles it may be your engine. I used Restore on some high mileage cars that have tapping noise and it helped a lot

I had a similar problem, my oil change guys said the filter had been superceded by a new model, and redid oil change with the old model oil filter. It did not help, complete diagnosis revealed bad bearings in the tensioner.

Just saying a correlation does not mean a connection.

Change the oil and filter again. If that fixes the noise problem, you know it had to do w/one or the other. Also check for anything unusual that comes out with the oil when you drain it. It is possible the oil was contaminated. The other possibility is the filter, maybe it had something dangling in it, and when you started the engine that object got flushed to some undesirable place inside the engine.

It’s a good idea when changing the oil to first look inside the oil filter to make sure there’s nothing there that shouldn’t be, before installing it on the engine. For this same reason I don’t recommend pouring oil into that hole in the filter to pre-charge it when installing a new filter. Its possible the oil is contaminated, or debris gets in there during the pouring process, and whatever’s in that hole goes right to the engine innards, since it is on the post-filter side of the filter.