I finally got my car running last week. It had an intermittent rattle behind the engine near the oil filter. Yesterday, the oil light took longer then normal to go out in the morning but at night was fine. This morning the light stayed on. I checked the oil level and it showed as fine. The oil cap vibrated off and shot oil on the hood. I cleaned that, checked the oil; just at the add line; and added oil. The engine sounded fine. drove about a mile and the engine starts knocking. The knock is coming from below the cover near where the rattle was happening. Any ideas? I'm really hoping that it isn't a rod because money is really an issue here. I have the old engine that I replaced (head gasket) for parts; if needed.

which cover are you referring too? valve cover, timing cover..?

Is your car lowered? If so you might have smashed the pickup on the oil pan and slowly starved the motor of oil. Prob is Rod knock ***, Time for a VE.

yeah that makes sense too. def something to check. if it makes you feel better my se-r has rod knock now. i failed to pay attention to my leaking chain tensioner gasket and beat the piss out of my car in a snowy parking lot. low oil + redline = fail lol

The bottom of the oil pan is dented by not that badly. The noise is coming from the valve cover near the oil fill cap. I plan on tearing it apart today to see if anything is loose in there. I don't know if I would call it a knock more like something beating on the valve cover.

Thank you for the suggestions.

yeah just check out the valve train if it sounds like its from there

Pop the valve cover and check out your rocker arms, maybe a you spit out a shim.

I took off the valve cover but don't see anything amiss there. I took off the oil pan and found metal flakes. There wasn't a lot of it but the part that I really didn't like was the threaded part of a bolt I found there. The threads were the same size as the oil pan bolts but all of them were there. Is there anything above that uses the same size bolts? The timing chain feels tight but could one of the guides use the same size bolt and it came out?

the chain guides use 2 small allen head bolts and one big shouldered allen bolt that i do not believe is as small as the oil pan bolts. plus if one of those broke you would be gettin a chunk of the head of those bolts not the threads. your bolt chunk could be from the baffle that sits between the upper and lower oil pans but if one of those broke it most likely would just fall into the oil pan and not cause any noise especially in the top end of the motor

I got the engine back together and the knock is still there. My dad listened to it and doesn't think it is a rod. It is more of a tapping sound. He thought perhaps the timing was off and the piston was hitting the valve. He had me use a wooden dowel (poor man's stethoscope) to see if I could pinpoint the sound. The tapping was coming from all four cylinders, the area where the timing chain is, and the oil pan. Could that be the timing is off? How do you set the timing? Will my consult cable show what the timing is? Is it the pull the engine so you can get the cover off method? Thank you for all your help.

If you hit the valves it would drop a cylinder. Metal shavings in the oil is a good sign the bottom end bearings are done for. If you still want to check the cam timing search cam install and follow the directions. Motor needs to be a BTDC and count the links between the timing marks. I forget how many there suppose to be but u should find it in the cam install thread.

No way to fix lower end bearings? What is the cheapest way to go with this?

No real cheap way to do it right. Some people will drop the pan and try and change the rod bearings. Depending on how bad the knock is it might go away for a little after you change the bearings. I did that to one of my cars long ago and it didn't turn out too well. I would just get another motor that would be cheaper than getting a new crank and bearings + machine shop work.

consult doesnt tell you what the timing is, because it depends what the cas/distributor is set to - i.e. if the timing is set right. ECU assumes the static timing is correct (otherwise if it knew actual timing it would just adjust timing and it wouldnt be possible to get the static timing wrong).

but with consult base idle/timing mode it locks the timing so u can confirm with timing light.