I have the same ticking you speak of. It's normal :)

Ok if its still bothering u soo much (by the way i had my ticking sooo loud that i could hear it outside above engine sound i thought VVEL was done on me, i changed my oil to 5w-30 royal purple and all gone) take it to the dealer they can check VVEL tolerance see if u need new one.

By the way Easter oil from nissan also makes that ticking less, thats what it was mainly designed for noise reduction from vvel.

I could care less if it's just noise just want to make sure it's not dying on me

I have the ticking too. and also on my old mazda. It's normal to me

I thought our engines ticked loudly until I took the cover off a bmw 335. Wow that's loud. And they use a memory foam type padding glued into the cover to reduce the noise.

Yeah i was building my friends i135 and that thing was loud and HOT as hell normal operating temp was ~300F, the wiring kept burning, the wiring maybe cuz of jb4 chip but damn a G2 thickness wire, it was burning baad untill we bought that length and replaced it

Bottom line dont buy a bimmer and over boost it.

Im trying to track almost the same noise, mine might be a tad louder mine is intermittent and only when the car has been warmed up. Does it seem louder near the front of the engine? Thus far when it was making the noise we sound scope a ton of noise from the belt tensioner, I am going to replace it and see, if not a guy at work is afraid it might be the chain tensioner, if it is I might throw in the towel with this car, way too much stress I do not need!

Sounds exactly like what I have. I only hear it when it's warmed up over 200.
I don't think it's anything to worry about. I just decided to forget about mine.

I replaced the belt tensioner today, thus far not a,peep, ill check back after a few hundred miles

I think that's VVEL chatter too.

Any squealing from the belt when the engine is cold? If not, the tensioner is probably okay.

My noise was lower not up by the heads, plus I have a 10 year nissan tech at my store now . And while he never saw one go on a 370 he said they put tensioners on altimas abde frontiers all day long, so that's the route I went.

Hmm. Hopefully that takes care of it then.

Do you have any aftermarket pulleys installed? I haven't heard of anyone needing a new belt tensioner before, but of course any mechanical part can randomly fail.

EDIT: Ah, okay -- might be extra stress on the whole system from the SC pulleys wore it out a bit early.

EDIT Part 2: Wait -- you have a turbo, not a SC? Never mind then.