Heres a video of it, WTF is it? Lifter Tick? Deffinatly not rod knock.

http://home.mchsi.com/~strang5/Tick.wmv
(right click save as please)


Car was ~210degs in that movie. Its worse on cold start up, almost a sewing machine noise. It has NEVER done this before. When it is worse is if your in high gear ( say 5th or 6th at like 40-50mph ) and your just going along idleing on flat grounds, and you come up on a hill, and your just gonna forgo downshifting to maintain speed, and the motor lugs a bit, thats when it makes the noise bad...

Im thinking its something in the valve train, but I'm not too smart.

 

mine does something very similar at cold startup then goes away as the motor warms. i hear it again if the engine is under load. my budd who's a mechanic siad i have a small exhaust leak somewhere. i noticed it right after i had my cat-back installed. i think they banged something and opened up a leak probably from the exhaust manifold gasket.

 

Well, IDK if thats good news or not. Could My headers just be loose? Note I don't have stock manifolds.. I also am running 10w30 Mobil One Fully SYN. I was told to add stop smoke to the oil, in order to try and hide the noise if its in the valve train..

 

could very well be a loose header. check all your bolts and listen around that area for the ticking. also look underneath for black soot marks. a telltale sign of exhaust leaking carbon.

 

Check for a loose sparkplug.

 

how long ago did u install your headers? I know a week or two after I installed mine, my car started ticking as well. You could try and reinstall them with new gaskets. Its worth a shot. Search around the forums and you'll find which gaskets people use.

 

The BBK's have been on for over a year, possibly for the whole length of the cars life, I'll be sure to look Thanks