I have the dreaded lifter/push rod tick that ford 4.0 V6 are famous for. I want to keep this truck so I am willing to fix it (by myself) and was wonder if any of you veterans could give me some advice, like first is the tick caused by sloppy clearances between the push rod and the rocker arm or between the rocker arm and the valve stem, can they be adjusted, does the after market have any fixes for this and so on...thanks in advance guys.

Is the tick constant, even at idle or is it only under load or heavy acceleration?

Well when I first got the truck back in 04 the tick would come and go at idle, someone told me it was cause be excessive carbon build up so I decide to use higher octane gas and run a Sea foam like product through the induction system (Run Rite) and the tick went away for about a month and came back. Now after a few months the ticking stays with the truck almost all the time, during idle, under load, ect, ect. Many people have told me that it is a sloppy clearance in the valve train and most late model Fords get it. She has about 130 on the ticker so I figured it was a probably w/ the valve train.

Since it went away with the cleaning product, I would suspect it is not the valve train. The first thing I would try is cleaning the mass air flow sensor filaments and re-torquing the lower intake manifold. These are the most common cause of OHV engine ticks. Do a search on these and you will find tons of info on how to do them. If it is in the valve train, the pushrods have been known to get mushroomed after high mileage. As far as I know there is no adjustment for clearances as our lifters are self-adjusting. Maybe someone else with a little more experience will jump in and correct or confirm this.

If you decide to replace your rocker arms and pushrods contact Delta Cam. CLICK (http://www.deltacam.com/) The make a good upgraded version. I think its $150 if you contact them directly but you can get them on ebay for $124.