[Johnx64]

I rebuilt my first engine (75 sbc .30 over 400crank) with the help of a friend that's done it before with someone who knew what they were doing. He ended up putting my cam in 4degrees advanced and it had already 4 ground into it so a total of 8 degrees advance. Needed my car to get around so I left it like that for 2 weeks then finally got around to retiming the cam. That day my boss wanted me to come in early for work so I made the mistake of putting it dot to dot and not changing the keyway (I think it's called something like that) so my timing was out of wack big time, it wouldn't start and I ended up bending alot of pushrods trying to figure out what was wrong. A few days and about 10 pushrods later I decided to take the timing cover off again and see if thats where my mistake was sure enough it was. I tried prying the timing gear off with a hammer and broke a tooth. Im short on cash so I figured since it's a double chain I can just use it for a week till I get paid and replace the belts and lower radiator hose while im at it. Start's up and sounds alot better than it did before but there's a tapping noise and it sounds like it's coming from either the #1 or #3 cylinder. I was thinking maybe a collapsed lifter then I remembered about the broken tooth. The warmer the engine gets the louder the noise gets and when I rev it it sounds horrible. Has anyone here ever had a tapping noise that turned out to be a broken tooth?

[SSedan64]

You may need to do a compression test to see how many valves you bent. What do you think bent those pushrods? I seriously doubt that missing tooth is your noise problem. Hope I'm wrong.

[dalesy]

Sounds like that to me too. Jacking your timing around like that has surely caused valve damage. You should probably be having a miss also.

[Johnx64]

That's what my first thought was a bent valve. I just had the heads rebuilt when I was rebuilding the engine because of a bent valve and it didn't sound anywhere near as loud as this one. Im not sure how the other valve got bent before the rebuild but 3 of the kieth black pistons ended up losing a chunk of piston but left the rings intact and I assume when they made their way into the heads it bent something along the way. Im just wondering, well im really hoping there's a possibility that the one tooth missing from the timing gear could make such a noise and that it's happened to someone before. Either this week or next im going to be replacing the timing set and will find out if it could be the culprit. Im just looking for a sign of hope

[Johnx64]

Well I took the head off on the side the noise was coming from and the valves aren't bent. I had the lifters out and was looking at the cam lobes while I was hand turning the crank and #1 intake just doesn't look right to me so im going to take the cam out when I replace the timing set and take a look at it. I was pissed that I didn't have any bent valves because atleast then I would have known what the problem was.

[SSedan64]

If it ate a cam lobe that would cause some noise from the slack in the rocker adjustment.

[Double_v23]

Yeah I would think that you wiped out a cam lobe. And that is what is causing your ticking noise. Unfortunately that means there is metal shrapnel all through your motor and your bearings are probably trashed. If you do find something with the cam then you need to redo the whole motor.

[dalesy]

When you rebuilt the motor, did you put in new lifters with the new cam? And did you use the special assembly lube included?

[Johnx64]

Originally Posted by dalesy

When you rebuilt the motor, did you put in new lifters with the new cam? And did you use the special assembly lube included?

Well no I didn't I used a **** load of permatex assembly lube. Turns out 4 cam lobes were gone a good very noticable amount so I ended up getting a mild voodoo cam\lifter kit for $100 from someone off craiglist today. This time im going to be using the assembly lube and add some kind of oil additive with lots of zinc after I change the oil. Hopefully it will last long enough for me to play around till I can get a roller motor.