What oil to quieten HLAs?

[NiceCupOfTea]

My Mk.1s HLAs have been much better since they got swapped for known good ones, and I've been using Halfords fully synthetic 5w40 in it. Oil change a couple of months/1000 miles ago, and I have noticed that when I am sitting in stop start traffic the rattle comes back, although when I am on the move again or rag it a bit it tends to go again after a while.

Is there anything I can do to try to improve it? My indy says he finds semisynth 5w40 seems to work well. Is there a different grade that might help? Do I need something that is thinner when hot?

[BonzoG]

I know nothing about oil, other than that full-synthetic Mobil 0W-40 seems to keep my HLA's quiet for about 5000 miles of hard driving. If I'm driving economically then you can probably knock that down to 3000 miles or so, but even then a good ragging will clear it up again. 116k on the clock, doing about 2.5k a month.

I think I'm lucky with the timing - my HLAs are a great service indicator.

[Howard-]

Last time I changed the oil I put 5w30 (I think..Or was it 5w40? I'll check in a mo) in and it cured the "acceptable" 1-2 second startup HLA noise, let alone at any other time! Runs beautifully.

Edited by Howard- on Sunday 15th August 12:29

[NiceCupOfTea]

I always get the 5 sec. rattle as oil pressure builds. I had the "clack" today in traffic but it stopped soon after I was barrelling along and was nice and quite for 5 hours of NSL driving today.

ISTR 5w40 is what's specified in the manual.

[jay140285]

Think I used 5 40 mobil on last change and I get rattle for 3seconds on start up and thats it.

Edited by jay140285 on Wednesday 18th August 14:40

[JFReturns]

Erm... HLA's??

[youngsyr]

JFReturns said:

Erm... HLA's??

Hydraulic Lash Adjuster, aka hydraulic lifters or tappets:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_tappet

Am I right in thinking that only the Mk1s had HLAs, with solid lifters being used on all of the >MK2 cars?