klze still knocking after 3000$... please help

[jordanmaschi17]

My klze began to knock about 3 months ago and i figured it was with one of the HLAs. I decided to replace them and thought i might as well do the springs and retainers while it was open. both heads were sand blasted and cleaned while the HLAs, springs and retainers were replaced. i also put a new water pump, and timing kit in.
The knocking was coming from the front head originally but now it is coming from the back head.. can anyone help me and tell me what i should do? could it be the machine shops fault or machanic that but the heads back in?
all parts were from interprep tuning so i no i got quality and its not faulty parts

[wytbishop]

"Knock" can mean a lot of thing depending on who you're talking to. You have to either describe the symptoms with more detail or provide a good quality sound clip or something. This sort of thing is really hard to diagnose over he Internet.

[Inodoro Pereyra]

Wytbishop is right. However, if you're saying what I THINK you're saying, it's not knocking, and it's a cheap problem to fix.
If what you're talking about is a loud ticking noise coming from the cylinder head, similar to valve ticking but louder, you need to replace the friction gear spring(s). The FGS is a washer shaped spring that holds the 2 gears in the driven camshaft (1 on each head) together. Due to a design mistake, the old style FGS start making noise once they lose their tension. So Mazda redesigned them and issued a recall. You will be able to recognize the new style ones because the spring has 2 little tabs in it's center hole, and the nut has 2 corresponding notches.
You need to buy one or two gear springs and nuts, whether you want to only replace the one making the noise, or both.
The Mazda part numbers are:

KLY1-12-417A for the spring
KL01-12-412A for the nut

In the past you could also buy them from Ford, but now the geniuses have discontinued them. Another reason why being a Ford owner sucks...
Anyways, here is a thread about them, with links for tutorials on how to replace them.

http://www.mx6.com/forums/2g-mx6-genera ... embly.html

[Pritchett]

Are you saying doing the heads+ a water pump+ a timing belt kit cost $3000 or is that with labour from a mech + the motor ect, etc...

[marcdh]

Sandblasting heads? That sounds like a nightmare.

I'm with Inodoro. As soon as I read rear head I thought friction gear spring.

[Gro Harlem]

valve tap is typical on HLA mazda engines. I say just live with it. From what you are describing it doesn't sound like you have "knock"..you'd know if your engine was knocking..its much more pronounced. Switch to solid lifters if you want to get rid of the tapping the HLA's are known for...you could've switched to solid lifters for about $500 instead of wasting all that money on unnecessary machine/valvetrain work.