Keane Do you still have this Monte?
Or did you trade it in for your new one?

 

Yes i still have the car. Still knockin away, i believe its an oil flow issue. Maybe when you redid the heads something shifted around or maybe something wasn't quite put back together right. For mine i'm thinking theres clogged oil passages making it knock, but who knows.

 

It definately sounds like a sticky valve/lifter issue...

To know for sure I have an old school trick for you to try...

Take a sheet of paper cut it to the size of like a 3x5 card....

Start it up...
Place the peice of paper lightly over the tail pipe.....

holding the paper til the edge of 1 side is just barely over the edge of the otherside. It will move like a flapper on a diesel truck .... If it sucks the paper into the tail pipe at anytime...(more than once).... That definately means its an bad exhaust valve....

Its an old used car lot trick my dad taught me a longtime ago...
Motor honey works ok in my opinion of freeing up a valve train...
I would also try that Lucas high Mileage motor treatment..(I swear by it)
I use it in all my vehicles now....

Lemme know if this is something youd like to try...Just to be sure...its a valve/lifter issue...

 

Was it running ok?

Oil starvation can kill a motor quick, luckily they are in a ton of cars/vans/suv's, i just did a engine swap on my sister 3.4 buick rendezvouse(same engine family as the 3.1) picked up the engine for $350

Did you keep track of the order the push rods where in when you removed them and reinstalled? the exhuast and intake lengths are different and mixing them up can mess things up

 

@ucantseeme702 - It might be best to begin a fresh thread to avoid inter mingling details on an old thread.

Regardless, some things come to mind:
1 - Were you having oil circulation issues BEFORE you did any work to the car?
2 - While everything was apart, did you CLEAN everything? If not, perhaps you have some solidified sludge in the push rods and such, causing the oil NOT to flow where it should.

The 3100/3400 engines are notorious for a slight valve tick if it's a light tick, not a big deal, but if it's very loud and changes as the car heats up, it may be a sign of something more.

Starving an engine for oil can be a fast killer. You may really want to get the opinion of a local trusted professional.

 

I'd like to try some stuff to see if it quiets her up, but at the same time i really dont want to go dumping different kinds of things in the engine. I think i'll probably just let her be. Been doing perfectly fine since the day i bought it.