Hello everyone, I have been browsing the forum for a while now not registered while helping a friend with his truck, and needed some help so signed up.

Back story - I never heard it running before I stepped in to help. He said it had a lot of white smoke in the exhaust and someone told him head gasket, so he changed the head gasket and purchased a reman head. He swapped his rockers/springs to the new head (the head came with a cam). and got it bolted back on the truck, and then left it for about 3 weeks.

This is where I came in. His timing chain guide was missing and he was scared of timing so asked me to come do it. I toke the acc/front cover off and swapped the sprockets/chain and put new guides on, sealed everything back up and got it all back together. I assembled the top as best I could with the vac hoses (No matter how many pictures I look at, no diagrams seem to have all the same as this one) and fired it up. It runs okay and idles good, but it is very noisy under valve cover. He thought it was a rod bearing he has had one go bad before and swore it was same. I didn't think so, but I wanted to pull the pan to clean out old broken tchain guide anyway. So I dropped pan, replaced rod/main bearings (none super bad, a few main bearings had some scoring down to brass/copper) and sealed it back up.

After starting it again, exact same sound. Its a constant tapping, goes up with rpms. I have loosed the valve cover completely where I could lift it up and noise continues. I have adjusted the valves hot and cold and doesn't change.

Any idea where to look next or something to try? It does sound like its coming from the rearish of the valve cover, but very hard to pin point. I have looked at quite a few youtube videos, and swear it sound the same as almost all of them lol. Are they really that loud?

Thanks!