We put on a new timing belt when we swapped in this motor. For this week I drained a quart and put in a quart of Marvel, and I'm going to tear back into it next week after driving it around for a bit... I think I set my lashes a bit too high (.006-7) for an engine that cooled down too much when I was working on it. I'm going to tighten them up a bit. It got a bit more clattery overall. I still haven't had a chance to check for piston slap, I'll do that soon.

Thanks for all the support.

Ok, tore back into it today... and am trying to track down the noise. No, I didn't check for piston slap yet, (got a bit too eager) but I did have a question. This is fairly new territory for me, but I was curious. When you're at TDC, and your 1,2,5,7 are "open" so that you can fit your feeler gauge in between the rocker and the lobe... should the exhaust rockers that are open have any "play" in them, or should they be seated firmly against the valve stem?

Like in the following:



...Where the arrow is pointing, do any of you know if there should there be any play there?

If the valve is open, there should be no gap between the rocker arm and the valve, or between the rocker arm and the cam lobe.
One thing to keep in mind....depending on whether it is #1 or #4 that is at TDC on the compression stroke, determines which valve sets are open and which are closed.

Right, I'm tired, and I came back in here to delete that last post because I realized it's dumb, and I just made no sense. Of course they're going to be loose, because there's space there, at least enough so that you can fit your feeler gauge between the cam and lobe. Duh.   

Thanks though.

Now off to bed.