christ I thought it was a pain in the arse to remove the valve covers on my turbo.. now im not really gonna complain seeing what you have to do. ill just shut up and take my 10 minutes worth of unbolting and be happy with it.

Others have said that it is definitely not rod knock. I'm leaning towards valve lash, bad valve spring, or something clogging one of the oil passages causing oil not to lubricate something due to the fact that I had no problems before doing a head job and I had the head off for three months sitting under a tarp before puttin it back on.

I'm just remembered that just before doing my head job I managed to suck up some water through my air intake and the engine died. I made sure to get the water out of my intercooler and started it back up and it ran ok, but now I am thinking that maybe this did some damage to the internals. I'm going to inspect for spun bearing and wear on the crank and connecting rods.

I've also started pricing JDM engines, specifically the 1jzgte. If I have to do an engine swap I might as well do a 1jz swap, right? If I do, I will have thousands of dollars of brand new parts on my 7mgte that have zero miles on them that will be available for sale.

I'm also considering selling it as is as I really need an imediate driver. There are many new parts installed and some not yet installed. If anyone is interested in something, let me know. That is going to help me make my decision about the engine swap.

Some of the new parts are listed below in my signiture, but I have more, just ask.

Water in a combustion chamber could have created a hydraulic lock, depending how much you pulled in. If that did happen, a bent rod is common damage from such an event.

my 7m was making that identical noise so i pulled the engine apart as part of my grade 12 mechanics project...........and ended up finding i had to get .030" taken off my con rod journals. that ticking sound is definitely a spun bearing somewhere in there

Its a rod. Mine sounded the same way but only right after it fired up it made the noise (just like yours) for maybe 1 second. On the break down of the engine it was all chewed up and had 2 bent valves

Our engines don't have pushrods, we've got dual overhead cams

sounds like lack of oil, my 200sx made that noise for a week before it seized solid.

Yeah, definitely sounds like a stuck or broken spring, although.. I have heard a spark arc that sounded like that (in the video). Its almost a metalic sound when it is wiring arcing, but an arc strong enough to make that noise would affect the engine (doubt that piston would fire).

I vote pull the valve covers.