360 LA squeel / scraping noise like drive belt on passenger side

Morning all

We have searched the forums and have only found 2 similar posts, neither one left an answer as to what they found. Here is my info

Recently rebuilt 360LA.
Pistons/rings
timing chain
new oil pick up
lifters
Thumper cam
intake
4 bbl carb
Valve springs to match cam/lifters
valve covers
headers

I give you some info as its usually asked. We did our break in for the cam, no issues. Got the car timed, went for a test drive, car worked well. Did a burnout or 2 , everything was good. Tweeked the timing some ( Around 20BTDC which from reading should be around there for that size cam). Tuned the carb with vacum for max vacum. Everything going well. Put some mufflers on the car bc up until now it was open headers. Now we can hear a horrible exhaust leak. Tried new gaskets, did not fix anything, decided to waste time and try to get the headers out, and with long tube headers on a 360 in a dart, well that was basically a waste of a few hours. I did manage to get the engine raised up enough to move the header away from the engine and check the surface in case I missed something. Everything looked great, thats when I noticed the smog ports ( PS I did not know thats what they were until I did some research on this as well). Drilled the ports ( Drivers side) and plugged them.

Ok so we know what the exhaust leak is on the passenger side. So we were not worried about that at this time. Went for another drive so that we could actually hear the car this time, again had some fun, now on the drive back we noticed this noise start. It was only a 2 min drive, but it sounds like if the alt bearing is going, or the water pump, but its coming from what we can tell the passenger side , under the valve cover or lower. Its hard to pin point, we did try using a tube to listen and find an exact location but that did not help.

Other info:
We pulled the belts off, noise stiff there
We pulled the valve cover, checked the rockers, retorqued the shaft ( PS , THE TORQUE ON THE SHAFT IS NOT 30ft.lbs like the manual states, which I found out on this fourm, it is 15-17 ft lbs).
We did notice the oil pressure was EXCELLENT after the break in, on start up it would be 60-70. But has slowly gotten lower and lower, until it was at 40 on start up and the guage looked like 0 when warmed up and idling. Maybe 0-5.
So we changed out our break in oil, we did not see any metal in the oil, but the K&N filter did seem cloggged to me. Usually when I turn a filter upside down all the oil dumps out. This one did not. So we cut it open, no metal, but it was slimy in between the flaps of the filter.
Changed the oil and filter. Oil pressure on start up went up some, back to 50-60 psi, then dropped as it warmed up to around 10 psi. Still seems low. Went for another drive, noise still there.


Ok sorry for the long post, I just wanted you to have all the info. This noise only started I believe after I repaired the drivers smog ports ( Or I could only hear it after fixing that leak)...Raised the engine as high as possible with the tranny attached to gain access to the smog ports. Do not think I could have damaged anything doing this, but figured I should mention it.
Any suggestions as to what I should check
Things on my list
- I read one post that said the transmission pump, I know my fluidis low, I was down a liter without the car running, and I did notice when we got back from our drive I have a tranny leak from a hose that I will fix. So I could be down 2 liters of fluid, so I will check and top this up tonight
-I also read the oil pump flinger, could cause a noise, but I would think I would have had that the whole time, and it would be from the front of the engine.
-Im going to check compression on each cylinder ( This should tell me if there is an issue with that cylinder correct??)
-I checked the bolts on the torque converter/flex plate. They were good.
-The heater core is bypassed, could this cause any sort of issue as that is on the passenger side.
-I also read in one post that a carb to manifold vacum leak could cause this noise, which does not seem right to me, but I will check that as well.

Thats where we are at: and I will post the fix when we figure it out. Nothing worse than someone not posting the repair.