Hi all!! I'm a newbie here in desperate need of help. I've searched until I felt like my eyes were gonna bleed but came up with nothing. About a week ago my 16 year old niece accidentally ran her car hot due to a pinhole leak in her radiator. She said the tempature gauge went ABOVE the red HOT mark !!!! Well it didn't look like much damage was done so I replaced the radiator and the car hadn't been making any Ill noises. Well fast forward to today when I decided to change the oil, and the valve cover gaskets. Didn't take long to do this and thankfully no oil was mixing with the water...WELL after I got everything together I drove the car about 5 miles and got back home to let it idle to make sure everything was ok and the car started to make a HARD core knocking noise up top near the camshaft area. From what I can see the noise is corresponding with every revolution of the top camshaft. Now I know that all I did was change the valve cover gaskets, but is there something that I could've done to have caused this?? I didn't even TOUCH the camshaft or rocker arms or anything else up there but it seems and/or sounds like the timing may be off?!?! There was a lot of crud build-up up top but I'm sure that it wouldn't have suddenly started making this noise because of this. PLEASE help cause I hafta drive the car 3 hours to Charlotte NC on Thursday and don't wanna make it worse or better yet get stranded.

TIA
FreddyB


Modified by SHOtyme at 12:03 PM 9/19/2007