Chris, I'm just going to speak from experience and tell you what I learned from when my whipped 03 cobra went down. I had no compression in my #4 cylinder. No unusual noises, but obviously missing a lot of power.It's possibly head tick but I haven't heard one that loud. It's a good possibility it's in the heads. I know it was over 2g's in parts and labor to get the heads on my car where they needed to be. Mine was worn valve guides but since it was apart and making over 600rw made since to just go thru everything which lead to doing the bottom end...Moral of the story it would have been far cheaper to order a long block from MMR and just sell the good parts from what was in the car to recoupe some of the costs. Good luck man, everything with those freakin' cars cost $$$. That's the reason I don't miss having mine anymore. Keep us posted.