Headers...
If it's just surface rust, that's normal for uncoated header's.
But if the rust is deep, you should start planning on getting new one's.
There won't be a catastrophic failure, or anything like that, but as the metal get's thinner leak's may develop from the engine vibration flexing the tubing.

If you have a tick it could be a bent pushrod. Pretty easy to check. The 6-speed cars have been known to wreck the factory pushrods.
Remove the valvecover it sounds loudest by, remove the rocker arms, check the pushrods. Replace the ones you find bent with new OEM ones, reinstall rockers and torque to 22 ft-lbs. Roll motor over 90* and re-torque to 22 ft-lbs. Re-install valve covers and be on your merry way. I've done it 52 times at least. I had a pretty bad tick, so i yanked the valvecover off and this is what i found for the intake side of the #7 cylinder

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If you rotate the cranshaft, it will move the lobe of the cam out from under the lifter/pushrod, and leave less tension on the rocker arm bolt. This will allow for a more accurate torque reading from your wrench. Plus it's always good to go over your bolts a few times to make sure everything is right.
You can roll it over by placing a 24mm socket on the crankshaft pulley bolt and rotating it clockwise. I usually tighten them to 22 ft-lbs, turn the crank 90*, re-torque, turn another 90* and RE-torque, just to be safe. The second 2 passes usually take about 2 minutes each, since the bolt is already all the way in.
ALSO, make sure you only use a 6 point socket on the 8mm rocker arm bolts, they will round off easier with a 12 point.
I must also say that hardened pushrods, although tempting, spell death if you are running stock valvesprings. If an event should happen similar to bending a stock pushrod, but a hardened pushrod is in place, you are going to have a bent VALVE. Heads have to come off to fix this, and that is NO FUN.

That was about a year ago. I got a new pushrod, put everything back together, drove about 3 miles from my house and my rear end exploded.
Last edited by TheBlurLS1; Feb 24, 2006 at 06:30 PM.


