Well I've been battling what I seemed to think was lifter-tick noise for over a week now. It started by mild-chatter and worsed into more of a clank-clank-clank. Eric Wort can confirm it seemed to be lifter tick. This was also contributing to the poor performance of my engine via phantom knock. After detecting the good ol' 43 counts of knock and pulling my timing, i figured i'd take it home once again to see if maybe a bearing or something hadnt frozen up. No problems there, so i put the valve cover back on and voila~~ all the chattering noise has completely dissapeared---which was present an hour ago (also can be confirmed) BUT............

Out of the midst of the silence I hear this noise now when I rev the car up

http://www.zheaven.com/Misc/knocking.wav

I took the car out for a short spin a few days ago and it stalled on me twice coming to stop signs and was hesitant to start again. Feeling completely defeated (considering i've swapped heads twice after having one previously milled, two wasted trips to bloomington from springfield, countless sleepless nights, countless hours troubleshooting, a balnce shaft removal, ALL within a month of ownership)))) I decided to have it towed to Peter B's in Urbana.

If any of you guys MIGHT** know what my .WAV sounds like lemme know. I'm also debating selling this car as soon as I find otu whats wrong so I'm just giving you guys the heads up. Here are the specs

1990 GS-T FWD M/T
Red with black/grey cloth Int
96k miles on newer head that registered 170 PSI across all 4 cylinders
Turbo did not smoke at start-up all 3 weeks I drove it
Tranny that has 5-8k miles on it
I removed the headliner cuz it was falling down on my head

Anymore info inquire within

Now for some pics

Sorry to say, but it sounds like rod knock to me. I'd have the mechanics or you or whoever's doing the work drop the oil pan and check for a loose rod.

whoa, that's definately not lifter tick. pry rod knock like nate said or piston slapping.

Hmm, piston slap actually sounds about right to me. The noise seemed to be coming from the top of the engine, I didn't hear anything from the pan. I guess its time for you to take the oil pan off again and check all of the rod bearings anyway.

Yeah, we thought the same thing when we were diagnosing Josh's audible engine knock, but it turned out to be the rod bearing in the end.

I think i forgot to mention that when my brother was priming the oil pump before we put it back together he noticed the nut on the end of the oil pump pulley was stripped. Granted it was tight, it was still stripped. He welded the end closed. I'm not wondering if the stripping has worsened on the pulley and maybe its vibrating against the front case and causing that noise?