I have a 72 f250 with a 390. Tick, tick. Gets louder as it warms up. Lifter gone bad? It starts and runs great. Not to long ago I put a edelbrock intake and carb, accel distributer and deul exhaust. It woke the truck up a lot. If I start it up with the valve cover off, will it **** oil all over the place? thanks in advance for any wisdom.

 

Have you pulled the spark plug wires off individually to see if the ticking goes away?

 

it might be a small exhaust leak. sounds like you have good oil pressure. does the ticking get faster as you accelerate ?

 

yes if you take the valve cover off while its running it will spray oil all over. not a good idea.

 

Hook up a timing light to determine if the tick is at engine speed or half engine speed (twice or once per timing light flash, respectively). If it's at full engine speed it eliminates the entire valvetrain as a possibility, and points toward the bottom end, like a wrist pin. If it's half engine speed it could be in the valvetrain (lifters) or an exhaust leak, or *possibly* a main bearing.

 

What you describe is often a collapsed hydraulic lifter. If it is there
is no easy fix. The hydraulic lifters have close tolerances so
dirty oil with a speck of something can hang one up. Often
a oil change will make it go away or at least go intermitent.
If it is a lifter there is a tool that in theory lets you go
down the pushrod hole and pull the old one out. Hope this helps!

 

You'll have to pull the intake off because the lifters won't come through the manifold. Been there done that. I have a Edelbrock Performer intake and was thinking the same thing so I bought the tool. Didn't work, had to pull the intake. If it's any comfort, it's an easy job.

 

Thank you everyone for your help. I am going to try a couple of the suggestions this weekend. I'll post what I find.