What I am trying to figure out is if I have one or the other....What I have is when I give the car gas it has a vibration you can feel in the pedal and it lost power....I got a lil noise under the valve cover, I got the stethescope (sp) out and listened to it tonight its ticking pretty bad.... Not sure how bad of a power lose I would get from either ....But the car lost a load of power....I have been reading about alot of Comp R's going bad, I am guessing that would cause the ticking as well as the rocker to be loose ...Is thatwhat I am looking at... Collapsed lifter???

 

Take a few minutes and pull the valve covers, if it is a collapsed lifter, it will be obvious as will the loose rocker

 

I have comps regular hydraulic replacement lifters in my 94 and I have collapsed them a number of times. I also rev to about 6500 and my tune isnt quite right so i have bounced off the rev limiter through delayed shifts (damn automatics). Its not hard to pull the intake and replace them, just not as much fun as beating the **** out of it when you get done swapping them. Oh, and your massive power loss is most likely due to the knock sensor telling the PCM to pull timing because it thinks the ticking is detonation. Had the same problem here, watched it on the scanner. Get a whole new set of lifters and swap them out. They make good paper weights though when yer done.

 

What will be obvious if its a collapsed lifter?????

 

i would think the pushrod would be loose

 

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A LITTLE taping won't cause the BIG vibration ya are describing. opti,plug wires or a plug,and maybe an injector WILL cause this.
A valve would have to be awful loose to the point of not working at all to cause a dead miss.