Valve Ticking Has a Few Fixes

If it only does it for a few minutes on start up it's probably your oil pan o-rings starting to get weak and allowing air to be sucked in. Replacing yourself costs about $35 US and takes about an afternoon.

If it does it on start up and then intermittantly when warm it's probably your oil pump gasket and o-ring getting weak and allowing air to be sucked in. Doing it yourself isn't too bad and a good time to do the T-belt and cam seals. $40 US for oil pump and cam seals. It'll probably take about a day to work through it and make sure all is right.

If you ignored the intermittant ticking and driven several thousand miles ignoring it to have them tick loud and all the time... then you probably need to replace the lifters as you've pounded them to death. Two or more cylinders with failed lifters will also show excessive carbon build up. I found lifters for $8.40ea US.

Replacing valve seals isn't really a do it yourself thing. Sometimes you can find a shop that can do them with the head still on the car. If not then the head needs to be removed and taken to a machine shop. Cost to have valve seals installed, valves cleaned and reinstalled, head cleaned and milled $250 +/- (assuming you removed the head) Cost of head gasket set including valve seals about $100 US. Removing head yourself allow a day and a half and also figure in the heads stay at the machine shop.

It's uncommon for valve seals to go bad but sometimes they do. My mechanic has seen '93-'94 850's with failed seals at around 70,000 miles so it's not impossable.
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'94 855 5spd 'Drew' 205,500 Miles *** Never assume that your factory timing marks are correct UNLESS you know for a fact WHO has been in there and WHAT they have done!! ASK ME HOW I KNOW!!! ***