I am new to the diesel world so bear with me. I have an 84 chevy C-20 whith the 6.2(no turbo). It ran really well for a while and then rescently it started making a lot of noise coming from the intake. It alwayse sounds like the motor is knocking(when it warms up), also begins to tick a little. Is this serious or simple? any ideas are appreciated! Thank you!

if you can hear it clearly defined in the intake with the air cleaner off then you have a sticking intake valve. possible causes, damaged or worn pushrod, rocker arm or valve, or a faulty hydraulic lifter.

Will this require a whole rebuild? Can I take the valve pan off to see a possible problem? Maybe buy a performance cam and lifter, rocker, and pushrod kit.

Pull the valve covers off, remove the rocker arms and pushrods and visually inspect both ends of each rod and the underside of the rocker arms for wear. Hopefully you will see excessive wear, if you do, replace the worn parts and put it back together. I've seen them wear out one bank and cause a miss, it will be relatively easy to tell if they are worn or not. If you don't see any excessive wear its probably deeper in the engine and the heads/hyd. lifters will have to come out, maybe even the camshaft. I've not seen a performance roller rocker kit, and I have looked, be a really good idea to go ahead and buy a set of the plastic keepers for the rocker arms and replace them, they can break and allow the rocker to slide over keeping the valve from opening fully.