I go everything bolted back together. More or less in the right places.

So I said a little prayer yesterday and fired it up. It started right up and after a few seconds the oil pressure light went out. Problem is, it's making a rapid ticking noise. It almost sounds like an air leak, but it seems to be coming from dead smack in the middle of the engine. And it's a fairly high cadence. The car otherwise runs fine and shows no codes.

Some of you may have read the account of my bumping the starter with the timing chain off. So immediately I started thinking, "there must have been some interference. I've bent a valve or three."

So I spent the morning doing a compression test. It shows 110-120 PSI across the boards. This is pretty low I know, but no huge disparity between cylinders so now I'm less inclined to suspect bent valves. But I'm kinda wondering if I've improperly lined up the timing gears. If it was off by, say, one tooth on the cam gear, what are the odds that these would be the symptoms?

If intake valve is closing prior to the piston reaching the bottom of its stroke, it would result in a lower compression and maybe the rapid "air leak" I'm hearing is the last of the combustion pressure shooting out of the exhaust valve as it opens several degrees early, again before the piston reaches the bottom of its stroke. God, I really don't want to pull that front cover off again right now!

 

just a thought but, you can see the timing notches on the gears through the cam sensor hole.
you reused cam and lifters?

 

Ok, I'll try and get that sensor out and see what I can see...

I did reuse the cam and lifters. I brought the cam down to JC's British here in Denver and their take was that it looked fine and I should just run it. They were also of the opinion that unless you can find the 4.2 L cam shaft, that there's no grind better than stock. Frankly, I just didn't want to invest anymore $$$ in this engine than I already have at this point.

 

After a lot of swearing and unnecessary work I figured it out. I picked up a mechanic's stethoscope this morning and literally found the problem in 5 minutes. The tube for the dipstick was just ever so slightly bent the wrong way and the crank was just skimming it with each revolution. Wish I would've spent that $4 a week ago! Upside: I'm getting very familiar with removing the accessories and front cover.

 

Wow...

 

That's an understatement.