John
although you haven't read all the thread you focused my problem so good! First of all about my stock valve covers, I removed internal baffles to avoid the rockers hitting the steel. Of couse the noise is the same with or without them installed. Too much tolerance inside the lifters ..this is wahy I put 20W50 and actually I noticed oil thicker helps a bit. About noise what makes me scary to test the car is that ticking level is not as uniform as a kinda sewing machine..I heard some (maybe 2 or 3) tickings are louder and I guess those valves loose some degrees in opening-closing too. Anyway I will try to record the sound and to post a short video here, thank you for now.
Switching to a thicker oil to TRY to mask the noise is not doing anything for you, if this is a fairly new engine I'd get away from that thick oil, it's not needed.
Listen to fast68plymouth, you don't have a problem.
The last 383 I did for a friend with a custom Comp I got from fast68plymouth was a little noisy, the person I did it for complained about it a little and I told him the only way to fix it was to swap in a stock replacement type cam. I was actually going to use that Summit 6401 cam Dwayne is suggesting, I have used it before in a 383 with a 4 speed and 3.23 gears and it was ok for what it was.
