Well, I pulled my rods and sure enough 3 were bent. I cleanded up all the rest of the rods replaced the 3 bent w/ 3 used stock ones from a buddy, oiled em up, torqued em down to 22 ft/lb, no more ticking but still hearing a thump,thump, thump when throttling it.
I am a noobie to the inside of these engines, I have triple checked the header bolts, seem pretty tight, not sure where to go from here.
It for sure on the passenger side towards the front of the engine, what should I look into next. I know theres tons of threads, but I'm just new to all this and looking for suggestions which way to go, I appreciate it.

 

Push rods or connecting rods?
How did they bend?

 

I'm guessing PR's. Change your oil/pull your plugs and have a look.

 

you could have bent a valve or two... I did this and bent about 5 pushrods. 2 valves were bent from the piston to valve contact. Did a mechanical overrev from a missed shift cause the bent pushrods?

 

Yep, I was at the track on my 4th pass and missed the 2-3 shift. There were 2 push rods on the passenger side, 1 on the driver that I bent. They were not badly bent, but just enough to make it tick.
But now I feel the damage is beyond this.
Are valves hard to change, where do I start?
Drain the oil, pull the plugs, pull the push push rods.... am I looking at putting the car up on blocks for a while while I do this in may garage.
Thanks guys,

 

Best idea would be to pull the heads off to inspect the valves and also the tops of the pistons.

 

If its pushrods it will be more of a ticking not knocking.. Either way just pull the heads and check for bent valves. You can do this by pouring gas into the head and watch for leaks by the valves. If there is a leak then there is your bent valve. Ill almost bet though that you have bent a few pushrods .. Changing pushrods are easy and you dont even have to pull the head off.

You will need the tool to get your valvesprings off though. Then pull you pr's and roll them across a flat surface. You should find a few bent ones .

 

If your going to check out the valves and pull the heads, your cars going to be down for awhile, especially since you've never done it before. Put before i did all that work, id pull a compression check on them to make sure.

 

Might have bad valve springs. How many mile on them?

 

I just got done replacing my heads b/c of a 2-3-2 shift only i bent 7 of the 16 pushrods, shattered 2nd gear and bearings in the trans and floated valves. Costly mistake non the less but it was cheaper for me to search the for sale section and i got a set of used heads from an 02 ss with only 10k miles for $120 shipped. Valves were great and since i'm doing a cam swap i replaced all the springs anyways. It was my first time pulling heads and tooke me 2 days to do the swap including and ls6 intake. Make sure you dont pull a dumdum and do what I did and forget to tighten the ground wires down in the back of the head or...If you do buy diff heads dont forget to transfer the coolant plug to the new head so u dont have coolant come out after driving 3 blocks .

 

That's why I drive an automatic

Anyhow, I'd also suggest a compression check if you can, or at very least the gas test. If you already checked every pushrod and only found 3 bent ones, then it sounds like it could be valve damage.

 

LOL.....Girl

 

Ok, I'm gonna start w/ the compression check first then go from there.
Theres a LSX guy in town who's got a shop and is really cool, I'll check with him to see about checking the compression. If that works, then at least I'll know where the problem is. If not, guess its time to put the insurance on hold and break it down.
Its not my DD, but damn, I didn't want it to come to this. The car has just over 80k miles on it, I'm the 5th owner. Guess she has had enough and this is her way of telling me. I'll need to read up now on a rebuild and whats out there to use, might as well do some head, cam, intake work while its all aprt.

Thanks for the help guys, this site is great, real stand-up people, I'm glad I'm on here right now instead of working!