My trusty Sierra is starting to show it's age. At startup, it has a lifter noise until you drive it for about 20 seconds. It's gotten a little better since I put some Marvel Mystery Oil in the oil, but not completely gone. Also at startup the fuel gauge will go back and forth for a few seconds before going to the correct reading. Any input?
Dave

 

for the lifter tick try some sea foam . and the fuel gauge could be the sender in the tank thats what a S10 of mine did so i replaced the fuel pump and sender all in one . when i do my sea foam i do it just before a oil change . and i put a new cheap filter then add sea foam drive for a day or two or three then drain let the oil drip for hours and drain hot of course . then new oil and high quality wix, amsoil , M1 filter . I have also had good luck with useing rotella t6 5-40 to clean up the sludge and lifters. for the oil change after the sea foam then after that go back to your gas engine oil .

 

Thanks OLDS. Next oil change I will seafoam. Not really looking forward to dropping the tank, but probably easier than getting into the dash.

 

also if it you do replace the pump get a high quaility one not a off brand . also the dash clusters come out really easy . there is a little motor thing thats controls each gauge those go bad often maybe others can chime in on the gauge clusters .

 

Feel free to call me a tight *** but I came across this fix for the 99-03 fuel pumps. The pump motor kit can be had for 70 bucks shipped from a seller on ebay. Search for chevy silverado fuel pump and you will find it. It is an exact stock replacement pump. Dorman sells a fuel level sensor kit which consists of the pump module in tank harness, the level sensor, the new style pass through connector, the connector pig tail for the new style pass through connector and the rubber seal for the fuel pump module. Its 20 bucks from rock auto. For less than 100 bucks you can have a rebuilt good as new fuel pump module. My gauge jumps around a little too and this is what I'm going to do with one of my spare fuel pump modules so I have a good one on standby for when I need it.

 

More mystery fun for you guys. I was sitting in park today with engine idling and the engine was surging from 500 to 900 rpms at a regular interval. Is that a fuel pump issue?

 

Dorman stuff sucks ***. I wouldn't use their stuff if it was free, and I sell it everyday. Cheap chinese crap.

 

It very well could be. There are other things that can cause it, but I think it's fairly common for a dying fuel pump to do this.

 

Most idle problems in these trucks are due to dirty throttle bodies. Especially if it's been a long time since the battery was dead or removed (PCM learns idle over time even with gunk building up in the TB... losing power resets it and has to start over again, usually with stalling and roughness being a symptom for a while). Pull it off and give it a good thorough cleaning, especially around the edge of the blade and the bore it rests on. Wear gloves... i cut the **** out of my finger on one of the edges the 1st time. I can't remember if the 01s are cabled or DBW, but if there is an IAC motor and circuit, clean the passages very good and be careful to not get any cleaner inside the IAC motor.

For the lifter tick, lifters are pretty easy to change in these engines. Pull the intake, valve covers, valley cover, and rockers/pushrods/lifters out. Replace the lifters and button it up. There's a few good threads on installing the rockers with preload and stuff explained well. A saturday morning is usually plenty enough time. Unless, of course, you have a bunch of miles and the effort's not worth it to you.

 

Actually, you need to pull the heads in order to replace the lifters.