So lately my car has been ticking...a steady tic tic tic at idle and it speeds up when I throttle up. I've been looking into this as to what could be causing it and I want to hear what others think.

1. synthetic oil change in the last 1500 miles.
2. oil level looks good and hasn't used any yet.
3. PCV system hasn't been overhauled to my knowledge (130k miles)
4. Don't have equipment to measure oil pressure.

I'm thinking either PCV system needs an overhaul or there is an issue with the oil sump o-rings, so it's not picking up enough oil and causing the valves to tick.

Here's my other problem...how serious of an issue is this? In about a week or two I'm about to drive 2 hours away to get on a plane for vacation and while I don't want to damage my car, I don't know if I can get this fixed before I have to leave.


On a seperate issue, there is a protective plastic panel on the driver's side under where the passenger would sit that protects the gas tank. It has three bolts that stick down from the body. I went to go replace it due to the old plastic cracking and hanging down, but 2 out of the 3 bolts snapped either completely or partly. How would I go about fixing this? It's a fairly coarse threading...