Hey everyone. Need to scratch your brains.

My wifes car/my car is a 96 Dodge Stratus ES with the 2.4 DOHC engine. we bought the car 3 years ago with only 18,000 miles on it! The car had sat in one spot for 5 years in a nursing home parking lot and never moved. The little old lady that owned the car never really used it. Long story short she died and we bought the car from the state.

When I start up the engine on a cooler day 50 and below I get lifter noise and engine miss.

I believe the lifters are not pumping up correctly and the intake/exhaust valves are not opening correctly caussing the engine missfire. There has always been a light lifter noise from the engine. When I bought it she was a quart low and dirty. It didnt help they drove it to my house this way after not being ran for 5 years. A month later had to change the head gasket because there are prone to blowing out oil. A month later replaced lower control arms and sway bar links and water/pump timing belt. List goes on and on. I hate Chryslers........but it was cheap $1500.00 and looked brand new!

When I had the head apart off the block should I have replaced the small hydraulic lifters? I do not believe this is an oil pressure problem as we now have 70,000 miles on the car now and never seen any metal in the oil filter or pan. One bad lifter would create an engine miss. The engine miss is also intermittant and I never get a code for a engine miss. So I have no idea what cylinder it would be in. Just change them all? But to do all of that again I have to remove the timing belt, and lift the cams from the head again. Or should I just keep driving it? I am only running 5W30 oil. Viscosity is not the issue. The wife keeps nagging me about it, lol