you just have not had it at the right shop..

sorry but a good engine tech would have figured it out by now..

Heard this one at the marina last week..."If it Flys, Floats or Phuks...you're better off renting it"

Did they pull the distributor and look at it? Maybe the drive gear lost part of a tooth? Or the cam lost part of a tooth?

Mine's making noise too so I'm interested to hear what ever happened with your engine.
It really sucks that it only has 50 hours on it and you're dealing with this problem!
Please post what the problem was once you get it figured out.

OK, it sounds like an epidemic, my starboard engine has the same sound. Sounds like it is coming from the center of the engine or the starboard valve cover. I listened with a stethoscope and could not identify a location. I started to remove the valve cover tonight but with Stainless Marine Exhaust either the exhaust manifold or upper intake have to come off . Does not sound like an exh gasket leak, more of a metallic contact. My engines have recently been under some severe abuse due to low fuel pressure and disconnected knock sensors. The number 3 cylinder actually melted the center out of the spark plug and shot the porcelain out of the hex... oops. Slighly lower compression on cyl 3 but the others are OK (125 vs 150). My engines are 502 MPIs with 500 EFI cams, larger intake and exh valves, crane roller rockers and the boat has stellings boxes on it. Any thoughts on the source of this sound would be appreciated... As I was typing this I had a thought - PB per your posts it sounds like the ticking went away for a short time and returned, did you reinspect the distributor (cap and rotor) after the sound returned?

THATS FUNNY $HIT!!!!!

Any progress on resolving the ticking?

I had ticking in one of my engines (502) and it would come and go.Finally it would pop through the exhaust on start up but run fine just little loss of power.Long story short..I dropped an exhaust seat and it (pieces ) bounced around into all cylinders though the intake and trashed all the pistons.New rebuild was needed.So if you hear a noise ...it means something is making that noise.In my case pistons hitting nice hard pieces of a exhaust seat...

Cheap gaskets!!!

Sorry to tell you but the gaskets you are using are awful.
There is nothing worse than an exhaust gasket and riser gasket that is (simply) punched out of cheap paper gasket material.

You will need a stainless steel sandwich style gasket.

A stainless steel core, sandwiched between graphite gasket material. The stainless steel core keeps the gasket ridged, preventing blow out under high pressure, and the graphite seals the stainless core to both gasket surfaces.

Dennis Moore
Moore Performance

I checked all rocker adjustments and all was good (except for a small interference I found between one roller rocker and the stock valve cover). After clearencing the rocker arm the sound was still there so I decided to be ambitious and pull the engine. Once out of the boat with all spark plugs easily accessible I decided to build a leak down tester and check ALL cylinders before disassembly (I had early done a compression check but only on the right bank. The numbers came in between 3% and 86% leakage. The 86% was the number 6 cylinder which was in the area of the ticking sound... Hmmmm could be related. Upon disassembly I found the source of the sound, a part of the top compression ring which had broken free after the piston melted was wedged into the top of the piston and was making that elusive tapping sound as it contacted the head at the top of each stroke. Should be an easy fix, just chisel the ring part out of the piston and reassemble the engine. I should be boating by Labor Day. Oh, does anyone have an easy trick for removing melted piston from the cylinder wall?