Well.... I found out that I don't have a sticky lifter making a ticking sound...
I started taking the cam housing off, I notice that some bolts were really easy to remove, hand tight, I keep going, remove the caps on top of the housing, some bolts inside were lose too, I get to the last two bolts inside the cam............ and they were nowhere to be seen.
Instead I have bolts and a chuck of aluminum from the cam housing hitting the cam shaft. Amazingly, both bolt entangled themselves together and were jammed into a oil channel. (jammed so well it took me about an hour with a hammer and screw driver to remove them) Only the soft aluminum chunk was hitting the cam (notice how rounded the corners are), if the harden bolts were to hit the cam and jam up, the engine would most likely be toasted
(sorry for the bad pictures flash wouldn’t work)
Surprisingly the cam is not damage at all, I carefully been looking it over, not a mark on it from the bolt.
I'm just really gratefully that while I was revving the engine high rpms to free the sticky lifter that one of the bolts didn't fall into the spinning cam, or the 100 miles I drove it like that.
There is a missing washer from one of the bolts, I'm guessing it's sitting on the bottom of the oil pan.
But while I was removing the caps (to reach the inside bolts of the cam housing) I notice on the bottom of the caps there was a milk shake color. I did a leak down test and I have all four cylinders ~ 183-185psi range. I bought a new seal kit for the oil cooler, hoping that will fix that problem. When I drained the oil, it didn't look bad at all (no coolant/water), only about 200 miles since the last change. Any input welcome
Also, when I removed my timing belt from the cam gear, I notice that that it has a large bevel all the way around it (only ~150 miles since new belts and pulleys). I'll have to investigate more to see where it's rubbing or if that was caused by that bolt hitting the cam. In general, belts under high loads can twist or tilt, I doubt that is the case here.