so, what did you come up with ?

 

I went and put in a new valve cover gasket a new plenum gasket and a throttle body gsket. I also covered the area that I thought the plenum was leaking with a liberal dose of JB weld. Put everything back together last night and still have the same putting noise. Plus something seemd to blow out and all the metal objects kinda got a whiteish hue to it. kInda odd but tickles my mind as if I should know what is causeing this. Well back to square one and not sure where to go. Could it be possible that my timing chain skipped a tooth and is the whole cause? I swear I can look directly at the location of the sound but am finding nothing. I did however make a decent intake wrench for the one stinking torque bolt they throw in there...lol

 

At this point I can finally say success! The air inlet tude from the egr to the intake had blown apart. I hadnt given it a second look and was looking for something more serious than what it was. Truck sounds better than it hasd in a long time.