So I've been hearing some noise from the engine lately, so I decided to do a valve adjustment, hoping it was just a noisy valve... Pull the cover off, and I see a banjo bolt just lying there... dammit! The frontmost bolt had worked its way out and off the rail, and was just lying there in a valley. Luckily, I had Don's new bolts in hand, so I replaced them and adjusted the valves to .013, replaced the cap and rotor (Bosch), new igntion wires (Bremi), and a set of new plugs (NGK V-power, .30 gap). Put everything back together, and fire it up... still hear the damn metallic tapping from the front of the engine. So... how bad is it? Does this just mean I'm going to have a noisy engine (I can live with that), or is something damaged and going to fail in the future? I also snapped the stupid bolt that bolts the valve cover down (the front one, only bolt on there as opposed to nuts everywhere else), half of it's hanging out in the head somewhere... whatever!

Anyhow... anybody know what that noise means, and is it going to get worse or will something break?

-Tim

total casualties: 1 snapped valve cover bolt, one banjo bolt (AWOL), 1 twisted allen key (from trying to loosen the rotor), and 4 skinned knuckles (gotta love spark plug #6!!)