bought an OT pickup, runs pretty good but makes tapping noise, from driver side of motor. like hitting sheetmetal with a hammer. i changed the oil, added some seafoam to oil, and ran it without the fuel pump installed. no change. whats next , pull valve cover? i dont get inside engines too often.
Poke around with the 'ol sawed-off broomstick listening pole, occasionally one will lose a wrist pin bushing and will bang in a steady rythym. Should be able to pinpoint the sound
If you play with cars you should have one of these in your tool box to locate noises. You can use the the old big screwdriver, broomstick trick but for what they cost, it is a very cheap useful tool. Isolate the noise before replacing parts.
There is a sheetmetal oil deflector that sits under the rocker shaft stands on the FE engine.If a stand bolt comes loose, the stand will beat on the deflector. Sounds justs like a hammer on piece of sheetmetal. Not "finger tight" loose, but under torqued loose. Should be 45 ft.lbs. Had it happen on a 352 (which I did not build)
the 360 in my 72 f100 had a taping noise AFTER i changed the timing chain and gears turned out to be a loose bolt on the bottom pulley it took me a week to find it drove me crazy especailly tearing it all the way back down to the timing chain thinking something went wrong with it hasnt made a tap since
I will investigate more this weekend and report back, thanks for the input. This is a 71 f250 that I got cheap.
Sounds like it had a stuck lifter... as in one that was stuck collapsed and now oils properly. I've had them do that if it was sitting for a while before you got it.