Hey everyone, need some help figuring out what this may be. I recently replaced the valve cover gaskets and while I had everything open, removed the rocker assembly and push rods for cleaning, taking care to note their positions. Put everything back together, threw in a gallon of 15W-40 and a can of Gumout Multi-System Tune-Up to help further clear out any leftover residue or sludge. Started it up and it sounded great initially but then I heard this ticking, I shut it off right after it doubled and haven’t turned it back on since. What should I do?

I checked, double checked, and even had my mechanic friend verify everything was situated correctly before reassembling. Did Best’s PCV mod as well as thoroughly cleaning the intake manifold and throttle body with all new gaskets, and new NGK Iridium spark plugs while everything was apart.

 

My guess is you either did not torque the rocker towers (I did that once) or you somehow flipped the rocker shafts. The rocker shafts have holes in them that pressurize bleed oil in to the rockers so that the rockers float on oil, if you reverse them they bleed oil pressure away.

 

I torqued em twice, first initial torque, let em sit for a day then rechecked the torque before the assembly. I’m positive the rocker shaft is positioned correctly. I did the driver side first and after verifying the rocker shaft alignment gouge with the RAVE, I realized I assembled it backwards the first time (had the notch at 11 instead of 1 o’clock) so I had to disassemble and reassemble it correctly.