Ideas on what's causing my click/tick/rattle noise?

halfafish said
I got new rings, they arrived yesterday. I'm going to double check what I installed originally to see if that was the problem.

There was a question of the oil pump being high volume or not. I got two sets of numbers off the pump but I haven't found out what they indicate yet. On the body of the pump I can't read the first digit, but it's _121678. The pump cover clearly has 24563966. More research needed here.

I got the chambers cleaned up. It was very greasy feeling junk in there. I'm thinking if it was just a rich condition the crud would have been baked on but dry. This stuff was seriously greasy and sticky. I had to spray it with rubbing alcohol and use a fiber cup brush in my drill to get it all off, and that took a while. Here's the cleaned up version...

View attachment 1715880828

@Killer6 I talked to the guys at the parts store about the valve stem seals. And BTW this was a real store with real car guys and about 20 feet of printed manuals behind the counter. They were not able to locate any positive seals for a slant. Lots of viton umbrella seals, but that was all. Do you know a source for the better seals?

Sadly, work is going to rear its ugly head for the next ten days or so, progress will probably be spotty till I get clear of the end of the tunnel. :(

Slant oil pump volume is determined by the thickness of the rotor.
There are three thicknesses of the rotor.
Thinnest the oe mechanical lifters is approximately 5/8 inch.
Medium the hydraulic lifters and most replacement pump rotors are approximately 7/8 inch.
Thickest high volume pump are 1 inch thick.

Actual thickness listed in a much more accurate thousands is listed on the internet. The fractions listed above are useful for determining what you have but not for understanding how much wear is present.

Is the pump body aluminum? The oe pump on the slant in the 83 D150 is aluminum. I believe the aluminum pump body is common on hydraulic slants. I have ran the hydraulic aluminum body pump on mechanical lifter slants with the oil passage restricted without issue

Did you service - clean the oil by pass valve in the oil pump as part of the re build. The by pass valve should move freely and the FSM has a spec on spring length.
Oil pump rebuild kits with new inner and outer rotors and gaskets show up from time to time on e bay. Pay attention to get the correct rotor thickness.

To use positive valve seals on a slant the OD of the valve guide needs to be reduced. That is machine shop work.
Federal Mogul does have a press on rubber valve guide seal that fits over the stock OD of the slant valve guide. I have seen those in the Federal Mogul full engine rebuild gasket sets.

While you have the cylinder head off take a flashlight and look into the manifold side of the port to get a visual on the back side of the valves. There may be a lot of coking on the back side on the valves. It will be really bad on the back of the intake valves if the intake valve seals are letting oil get sucked in.