Need some advice....

[76sierraclassic]

Well, guys, I need a little bit of advice. Here's the deal. I have a fairly significant oil leak on my 76 stock 350 that has 140,000 miles on it. I had the rear main checked out a few months ago, and the guy at the shop said he ran it for 20 to 30 minutes and couldn't get but a drop of oil out of it. He of course had cleaned everything up at that time, and it's all gunked up again now. I looked at it as good as I could the other day, and I think the leak is either the rear of the intake manifold or the distributor gasket. The leak is worse the faster I go which sort of makes sense since the oil pressure is higher when running highway speeds.

I also have a lifter that "ticks" all the time. It's been that way since I bought the truck last November. My dad and I adjusted it a little bit when we changed out the valve cover gaskets just after I got the truck, but we were afraid to adjust it too much. We believe that the lifter is collapsed and I didn't want to risk bending a push rod.

I really want to replace the engine with a GM crate motor, but I just can't afford it right now, and it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to in the next several months after having just put siding on my house (priorities ).

I have a really good mechanic who's sort of a friend of the family, who I went by to see last night. I explained the situation to him, and he said that he could check things out and find out where my leak is for around $20 which I thought was pretty cheap seeing as how he will have to clean the engine up, drive the truck a little, and then search for the leak. He agreed that it would probably either be the distributor gasket or the intake, based on what I had told him. He said if it was the dizzy, he could fix it for around $40, and if it was the intake gasket it would probably be around $125. What do you guys think about those prices? I also asked him about the possibility of changing out the lifter that's messed up while he had the intake off (if that's where the leak is) and he said he would recommend going ahead and changing all of them since they are so cheap (he said around $2 each). I don't know how much he would charge for that part of the job should I decide to go that route, but it probably wouldn't be much more.

I would like to know what you guys think about "patching" a motor as old as mine with that many miles on it. Just for reference, it doesn't burn any oil, is relatively strong, and runs really great in my opinion. The oil leak and the lifter are the only things that I know of that are wrong with it. Would it be worth say $200 or so to get these things fixed and try to get by for another year or so until I can afford a new crate motor?

Any advice is appreciated.

Mike