I had a ticking sound and then more of a knock and when I pulled the valve cover the middle four bolts on the cam shaft caps had backed off and were loose. Could this have caused the knocking noise and what causes this to happen.

Ray

 

Have you had or done any work to that head recently? Those should have been torqued to a certain spec.

 

The bolts being out of the cam anything will make some kind of noise. Surprised that you didn't seriously beak something! The reason that there are so many anchoring points on these things is because an any rpm over say 1500, they will torsion, bend, and even snap in half. Go and get yourself some ARP bolts to replace them all and get them torqued to spec. Usually, any bolt in the motor is a one time use bolt anyways.

 

I had a rocker arm come off and it was put back on. Don't know if that happened to cause the bolts to come loose. What is the possibility of damage to the cam or the head at the journals. The lobes on the cam look to be fine. I hope by tightening every thing to the torque specs at 100 inch pounds that everything will be fine.

Thanks for any info.

Ray