Does my engine sound OK? - Over my head again
 

This is like the umpteenth time I've asked, and I owe you guys a beer.

When the weather got cold, my engine started idling with some more noise. I suppose it could just be severe lifter tick, but this is on totally fresh oil - changed it last night. Rotella T6, 4 quarts, new napa gold filter.

Does it sound OK, or is something up?

For reference, the same engine when I first installed it sounded like this:

I got an intermittent rich code (p1170) twice, so I used my obd2 reader and watched the MAF and O2 output, both of which looked good. I read the fuel pressure regulator can push out too much fuel when it goes bad, and you can test it by pulling the vac line to it and verifying no gas comes out?? I did that, and it passed.

The EGR valve seemed to be leaking fully closed, even after cleaning, though, so I swapped that out for one from the partsgroup, didn't really seem to do anything, although I haven't gotten the code again, so that could have been the explanation for running rich...

Again, not even sure there's a problem, I just would really appreciate some other ears on my engine.

It would help if I new what year it was. Sounds like lifters, or the HLA ticking.
When was your last oil change?

Sorry, it's a 97. This is right after an oil change, maybe 50 miles on it.

With your scan tool, look and see what MAF reading is. I can't remember off the top of my head what it should read but the factory manual gives a spec for idle and 2500 I believe. I can look on Monday when I'm back at work if no one else chimes in.

Sounds like HLAs. What's a check engine light? Isn't this miataturbo.net?

Thanks for the tip on the MAF, I'll do that. Looks like warm idle should be 1.3V, and 2500rpm should be 1.8V.

And yeah... sometimes I wonder if I should have just megasquirted this thing a long time ago, even though I won't get a turbo for another year+.