360 Block Lifter Ticking

After talking to my machine shop buddy we went down a few paths. Checked oil pressure, 75 PSI at an idle. After I did that I noticed it was not as noisy (the valve cover was off) and when I shut it off it was pumped up and did not bleed back fast. We decided I should put the valve cover on an drive it. After installing the valve cover and fixing a few other things (tail lights stayed on and fried the bulbs lucky I had short UTV mini 1157's and it did not destroy the lenses). Also for some insane reason it was so lean under high speed cruise it would barely move (idled perfectly). I knew I had put in jetting to lean it out to try to get better fuel mileage (failed) and wanted to put it back but was too lazy. Why after all this it was that lean at high speed cruise???? Put in the original 1403 jetting and much better but still has a slight surge. I richened the Duster up a bit and it was a different car. New richer rods on order for the Edelbrock for the Valiant now. Put about 10 miles on it and it is not ticking at all.