TheJohnnyGuy's 71 Scamp Apartment Resto.

polarman said

If you can afford to, you might want to get some gaskets and pull the valve covers and intake. Make sure there is no bent pushrods and look for pieces of umbrella seals kicking around on the heads. Bad valve seals will make her smoke. I hope it's just the exhaust gaskets.....BTW, nice Scamp!

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Here's what I dug up:
Valve cover gaskets aren't holding up their end... so I will be replacing them. The area where I heard the loud ticking from is right where I removed the totally blown apart manifold gasket from. everything inside looks clean tho. but I think those 2 gaskets explain the smoking and the ticking. I need to purchase some type of drip pan to drain the anti-freeze out of the car before I tear the intake off but I think that since i'm already this deep into the engine I might as well go one step further and give myself reassurance that everything inside is hunky-dory!