Well Fox graciously came over last night and amazed me with his speed and proficiency. What he did in a matter of hours would have taken me days. I just basically stood out of his way. We decided to forego the compression test and remove the passenger side valve cover to try to see what the source of the noise was. Unfortunately, the valvetrain looked good. The only thing we did not do while the valve cover was off was to reconnect the coolant and fuel lines and run the engine without the valve cover. While the engine was turning over, it did not make any sounds. Only when it revs past 1000 rpm does it make the meganoise. So while it could have been the valvetrain, we guessed that it was something down lower.

Well since Fox was over for about six plus hours and was super excited about Isuzu's, I decided to sell it to him. He's got visions of learning to rebuild an engine and do a solid axle swap. More power to him. Again thanks to all who have been so helpful and especially to Fox who pretty much gave me a six hour class on auto mechanics. Taro