SirGillsparagus

Hello everyone. So obviously there is a not pleasant noise in my engine that I think is rod knock. There is alot to expand on so to simplify things, history is a year ago, hit a bump going really fast in a turn, engine shut off while running went to restart it, but the battery was completly drained and after that the anti theft locked the steering wheel while i was still moving. it had a knocking noise that sounded like bad lifter tapping to me, there was a tear in the valve cover gasket on pass. side and that whole side of pushrods rocker and springs were extremely dry compared to driver side. oil pan was empty as well. found with an air compressor the pass side head gasket was shot as well. driver side was fine.
I had been planning to modify the engine for a while and already had a sniper efi. I am planning on ls swap down the line but to me this is a really good base to learn how this works and get better with the mechanics of an engine, also i do really like the original 305 small block in it and I want to keep it working for as long as I can. I ended up getting lunati cam kit w/ lifters, springs, retainers, timing gear and chain, I had to figure out a pushrod length that would work. got a new intake manifold set up with sniper efi(+distib. ign coil, cd box and msd 8.5 wires) with 3" headers. put in 3000 cfm electric fan. At this point it ran pretty well, have a couple vids of it idling and running up rpms. So at first, I had alot of overheating problems before the new fan, but it would run up to 230 with no signs of slowing so i would turn it off. There was alot of smoke at first but was mainly oil and a small oil leak that i fixed. I replaced the valve cover vent with and air filter vent and after being comfortable with temps enough to break it in, the smoke seems to be mild coming out of the vents and the rest was just oil burning I guess. So I set idle down to 680 after break in, to me i think it wants to be at the minimum 720 with the new cam. it didn't like lug or choke but you could feel the car kindave bouncing around a bit at 680 and 720 and above it wouldn't do it anymore, but by that point I didn't think it was a big deal and I had been messing with the idle for a minute. I ran it for about 3 consecutive hours in the garage in 30 min increments and less twice a day. So the plan was to see if it was drivable and maybe i could drive it in somewhere and get a good tune on it. I drove it at the hottest part of the day and it worked, sounded amazing, It did seem to like not want to wind up, kindave like it was starved i don't know if that makes sense, I think that the timing was off and i think that's why its had so many issues with over heating before the new fan. it did overheat on the drive on the streets after about 20 minutes, sat at about 205-8 then started going up to the 30's without stopping. So i let it sit for the day and went out at night, it was way cooler. I took it back out again and after 25 minutes it was sitting comfortably at 187* so I wanted to push it a little more than i had been, so from a stop put it up to about 1600-1800 rpms and let go of the clutch quicker than i had been. it seemed slow but I put my ear out the window and heard it doing a small burn out then it went off a little. I stayed light on the throttle never above 40%. so it seemed pretty solid at this point and i went to take a turn back on my street, it turned off at the turn. I thought it was just because the idle is low to what i think it should be and I'm a bit rusty with the clutch. temps where still fine so i went back out around the block and going up a hill it just started clanking with any throttle pressure. so pulled over left it on a sub road came back the next day and it will turn on and be fine when cold but after it warms up its pretty consistent with any load.
So there is obviously a lot more that I can elaborate on and I can put up all info of parts I used and why but I don't want to make this too long. I have videos of it working but not with the clanking noise, though I could prolly go get one quick. not in a hurry, am curious if anyone has some suggestions for places to start looking or has had something similar happen. I want to jack the engine up and take off the oil pan and check to see any play with the rods. If there is though, and I replace the bearings I want to fix the first problem so it doesn't start knocking soon.
Thanks anyone who reads this, it is kindave a lot.
One more thing I noticed. After it tuned off at the turn I started watching oil pressure gauge. and at 35 mph 5th gear, would sit about one tick about red line 0 pressure, and if i put it in 3rd it would jump up to one tick under the highest reading. The gears seem to change the pressure a lot with load so when I'm at higher rpms its pretty high pressure, and low and like almost none, I don't know if that is normal or not. It didn't ever redline or go to max at all from what I saw

ironwill

Your post is confusing, but I'll take a shot. Low oil pressure is a clue that there may be a bearing problem. I'd suggest before you do anything else to remove the oil filter, carefully cut it open with a pair of shears (not a saw), and inspect the filter media for metal particles.

SirGillsparagus

Sorry for the confusing post. I dumped the oil out. I didn't have any shears but when I turned it over and dumped the oil, you could see quite a bit of glittery flakes in the oil. I think a couple small pieces actually fell into the oil pan when dumping too. So probably a bearing right? I definitely want to get in there and check them. when it comes to lifting the engine, should I disconnect the transmission anywhere?

SirGillsparagus

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