I found a lot of info on valve ticking for the 22re, but not that much about the 3.0. Over the past 2 days I've noticed a loud ticking noise coming from the drivers side of the engine. It's louder than the normal injector noise, it's loud enough to concern me. To my untrained ear it sounds like its coming from the big aluminum "thing" (that's a technical word) where the "3.0 V6" is written (intake manifold?).

The thing that concerns me is that it happened suddenly. In an old post, Frank said if the valve gets too out of spec I'll burn it up. FWIW, I did just have the dealer replace the PCV valve on Friday and they replaced the rubber hose too. The last time the valves were adjusted was a little less than 60k ago.

So does this sound like the valves or something else? How long can I live with this?