Head noise

["Paul Irvine" <kcabpilot@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Project Alfa has close to 500 miles on it now and I've got just about all of
the bugs ironed out. I pulled the cam cover this weekend and rechecked the
valve clearances. I also did the final retorque of the head and checked
everything else for tightness and security.

I do however have one question/issue that someone here might be able to
answer:

I installed some performance cams. Without looking it up I believe they are
about 11 mm lift - enough that I had to dress the lobes a bit to prevent
them from interfering with the tappet bores. I installed all new valves,
guides, springs and tappets. So here's my issue - at idle this thing makes a
real racket. This isn't noise like something is eating itself up, just
regular valve train noise but much louder than I've experienced with any
Alfa that I've ever owned. At anything above idle the intake, exhaust, road
and wind noise  completely drown it out but when I pull into the garage and
it's idling it almost sounds like I've got a friggin' diesel under the hood.

As far as how it runs - I can't make any complaints there. It has a
substantial extra "grunt" that starts pulling right from the bottom end and
doesn't give up before 6000 (which is as high as I've taken it so far)

So I guess my real question is - is this normal?
My valve clearances are standard (.019 and .021)

Paul Irvine - Antioch CA
Project Alfa
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