I just recently purchased a 96 Civic EK with a 00 SI motor swap.

Today my motor started acting funny its making like a light clanking sound right under the valve cover, hard to explain its like clink, clink clinking in .3-.5 second intervals. Also when im driving and its most noticible in 5th gear it feels like the engine makes weird sounds lasting a couple seconds and it happens all the time.

Could low oil be causing this, I just bought this car and hadn't done an oil change. I checked the dipstick it was a little higher but the engine was hot.

What do you all think? Is this the beginning of my motor going?

 

valve adjustement? if its definitely coming from the top end i would say either valves are not adjusted correctly or bad lost motion assemblys

 

Are you sure it can't be the oil? Im about to go do an oil change and see if that effects it.

 

well low oil will make your internal noise more noticable because everythings not lubricated as well, but i thought you said the oil was slightly over full

 

u may need to adjust valve lash, unless its more of a knocking noise.
does it sound like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q6c3hl5FXM

 

^ that sounds a lot worse than my b16a2 does, but it could be the sound from the video.