Thanks again guys ...you were correct again.

 

Yesterday afternoon the lifter noise went away !!! The motor still has a heavy piston slap right at cold start, but sounds like a million bucks a second or two after. Once its warm, it runs even better. It has some spontaneous vibrations and rpm flux at idle, but we're talking about a 13yr old car with a 15yr old motor. It has all new plugsm wires and a clean throttle body. If anyone can suggest anything, please do.

 

I'm leaking a little oil from the drain plug, but that was expected. I used the original crush-ring because I planned on changing the oil in a week or so. If keeping a qt of tranny fluid in the motor all the time is OK, I'd like to keep doing that. It doesn't thin out the viscosity too much?

 

I had a CEL come on last night and when we restarted it to head home, it was off. I have a vac line under the manifold that needs to be replaced. I'm going to eventually re-do all of them.

I would have concerns regarding using a quart of ATF to replace a quart of oil. Yes, ATF would certainly lower the oil viscosity to some degree. Why would you want to use ATF as a substitute for motor oil? Are you thinking that ATF is a way of adding detergent quality to the motor oil? In my opinion, I would instead be more inclined to change oil every 3000 miles to keep the engine clean.

+1! You've probably "cleaned" the engine innards as much as you can/need to. Stick to straight motor oil from here on!