Will a bad lifter cause emissions failure?

[sweetgn]

I have a semi-bad lifter. It seems to be OK most of the time, but usually after I run the car hard it taps loudly for a few seconds. After that it is usually fine with no audible problem. I just put in a oil pressure gauge and pressure is at 40 psi when above idle and cruising, but it is at 10 psi in drive when stopped. I recently took the car to the emissions station where it failed for the third time. I had turbolink hooked up and was in the passenger seat while the tech was driving through the test. During the test the lifter acted up and caused 5 degrees of knock retard. When I checked the laptop buffer with the test printout, it was obvious the retard affected emissions in all three categories. There was a severe spike during and just after the knock retard. The car fails on HC's even at idle just after the test begins before the test driver hit's the accelerator. I can see it is at 2.0gpm on HC's will no mph on the computer at the beginning of the test and that is the lowest it goes the whole time per the graph they gave me at the end of the test. My question is if I have a lifter that is not opening up all the way would that cause excessive hydrocarbons all the time since you would have the same injector pulse width, but not as much air in that cylinder due to the valve not opening as far. Am I on the right track or am I just totally wrong???? I would appreciate any help on this issue. Thanks in advance!

[gofstbuick]

If the lifter noise starts to pull the timing back during acceleration, it may cause the engine to work harder under load. So yes it is possible that a noisy lifter may cause you problems. Jus my 0.02.