Hi all. I've been battling this loud ticking noise since last Sept. It started after I almost got stuck in sand on vaca in obx. anyway the front hubs were screwed and only one was engaging and it caused the excursion to violently hop in the sand. my windows wouldn't go down afterwards until 10 seconds after starting and the ticking started. got home replaced hubs and then started working on engine. i have replaced all of the valve lash adjusters, spark plugs, cop boots, some of the cop tops were cracked so i epoxied them(another post recommended). compression is good. does have a miss at idle, no smoke, no oil consumption, no coolant consumption. I did notice that when i wiggle the cop plug on the #2 cyl it causes a not so loud tick. no codes or check engine light. mech stethoscope shows sound is coming from either #1or #2 cylinder from under head and by the intake side of head. sounds like someone hitting a nail with a hammer rhythmically. all of the valvetrain looks good when i rotated it with remote starter and as it was running(oil dumping on ground) w/o valve cover. unplugging cop and injector on #1 and 2 makes miss worse but doesn't stop ticking. I'm going to replace the cop pigtails on #1 and #2 cop and possibly the cop. sorry for the novel im just frustrated beyond belief. btw the ticking is horribly loud. any clue to what is the problem?

 

Are you sure its not an exhaust manifold gasket? Have you checked the bolts to see if any are broken these engines are notorious for this problem.

 

There is one broken stud but there isn't any noise from there. It's at the #4 cyl. I'm thinking it's got something to do with the dash rattling that happened in the sand. It was horrible, I have never experienced that in a 4x4(wheel hop?) The 2000 excursion only has 72k miles on her.

 

I know it sounds strange, but check your carrier bearing. I had a similar sound on my '02 CC-LB and it was a bad carrier bearing. If you got stuck and had a bunch of "hop", it could have toasted your carrier bearing.