its hard to see 69, but in picture 1 the striations are going downwards and to the right. picture 3 has them going upwards to the right. picture 4 slightly downward to the right, picture 5 is up and down. there are marks that match it exactly on the rockers. im thinking its possible we both missed these marks and i may have gotten a bit panicky when i saw them. she ordered a new set of lifters (not melling this time), and i will be fixing the stripped threads on the lower manifold. the 2 replacement bolts for the plenum that were missing wont be in until monday. im going to go with the new lifters as there were no other signs of coil binding, but i will keep that in mind. if there is still any noise, then we will be looking at new pushrods, rockers, springs, and retainers. id just really hate having to change the springs with the heads on