I think I have an idea of whats going on but i'd like some second opinions, so anybody that can help me out here

i have a 98 ls1, the other day i noticed around left turns that more oil pressure drops from 60 to the 20psi range and sometimes under acceleration it'll do the same. I heard 98s had problems with oil pumps, so i figure that its the oil pump's way of telling me its on the way out.

so i started watching the psi real careful around the corners to make sure it was still pumping, when i started hearing what i thought was an exhaust leak, really loud ticking from the driver side. I open up the hood and hear its coming from the valvetrain. I'm assuming its a lifter since the pushrods were replaced about a year (maybe more like 1.5 years) ago and the lifters were not.

the temp fix was I threw in some lucas oil and it shut the valvetrain up. Sounds to me like its time to change lifters and oil pump, but I just wanted opinions on whats happening / do I need to change anything else out. Did the pump cause the lifter tick? Is the lifter damaging the cam right now?

 

Turning should nothing to do with oil pump -how much oil was in the pan?

 

yea neat trick for a center oil pump lol

when i checked everything out when the ticking started it was half a quart down.