Thanks in advance for reading my post there is a lot of stuff here.

When I first got my V6 a year ago and I found this site the information I got was always the best. Over the course of time that I’ve had my car I’ve crashed it and thrown probably about 2x what I’ve paid for it to maintain it, but I still love it. I now understand the responsibility in owning a vehicle and I want to upgrade parts of it. However, two engine noises prevent me from doing any real work to it.
Please help me identify possible causes of the engine noises.
The noises started after winter had ended. The car often had very little time to warm up, it doesn’t snow here in Arizona but when the car started you could still see the exhaust. When it came out of winter it was time for its 3000 mile oil change and the problem noise started. After I got a free change to Pennzoil from Valvaline I was shown the oil pan plug and it was covered in a black grime. After the oil change I started keeping a log of temperatures and other readouts. During this time I noticed the oil gauge started low then at start up became high then went low and during times of higher than 3k RPMS it would go back to the just start up position.


I have made a video of the recorded footage I took of the car from before, after and several months down the line from the oil change.
http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/5816/adfasdf.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3hbTNo2mtU

Also some body work I had done looks strange. I noted in pictures before I had to replace my bumper, on the left side of my car there was a large space between the bumper and the hood. In the after pictures the same gap was there. Is this normal for the V6 model to have the gap, I theorized that it was for slipping my hand into the hood but the hood pops up so far it is really not necessary. I also noted some warping on my fenders where they met the bumper.
I have included a super picture to show the body.

http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/8783/img300644m4.jpg

 

what kind of oil filter are you using? cant remember which one but there is a fram black top is a no no for these motors. what wt of oil are you using? you may be able to use a little heavier oil and get the lifters to stop ticking. the jet noise sounds like a vacuum leak to me. can you track it to the source? have you had it scanned for stored trouble codes?

 

That sure looks like a lot of metal on the oil plug. You can try other oil and a filter but I would not put any other money in the motor unless its to rebuild it.

 

The body issues look like simple alignment issues to me. It could be more but without seeing the car directly in front of me it is hard to tell. There is a bit of fudge room on these cars so you may be able to get the bumper up and in more if you play with the grey fiberglass horseshoe part the bumper mounts to. The headlight brackets are also part of the bumper alignment so you may need to mess with them some too. The bumper to fender there is not alot of adjustment but there should be 2 metal braces, one under the bumper cover and one from the body to the fender. These may still be bent and need to be straghtened or replaced. The part of the car under the door that is damaged is called the rocker pannel. The Camaro rocker is boxed and very difficult to repair it is much simpler to cut the old one off and weld a new one on, (trust me here I am an ex-bodyman and have done this on these cars many times).

As for the noise in the engine I cant get the video here at work so I am not going to be able to offer much help untill I get home.

Massey

 

Best I can make out from the sound. Low oil pressure, collapsed lifter, loose rocker, and air or vacuum leak.

 

Ok thanks for the advice on the body I'll play aroud with the fudge room. As for the engine I was going to buy new headlights then a CID,headers,exhaust, and then a new cam with lifters. However I guess that I will need to fix the lifters first. My chilton car manual says that I can get to the lifters and cam without having to remove the engine from the car if I attemp this I there anything I should know before hand?

 

That whine sounds like a noisy alternator to me.

 

yah i was thinkin it may be something like that. could take the belt off and see if it stops.

 

Based on that oil plug the low oil pressure is a symptom.

Metal in the pan
Lifter noise
a bad rattle at high RPMs
Change in oil pressure from "normal"

All seem to point to a failing motor. These 3.8's are work horse it may stay together for awhile but I would think real hard before putting good parts in a motor that has metal floating around in it. I would really limit the above 5K runs you do with it until you get this figured out.