2008 Mazda 6 help

[jp3]

hi new here..my son has a Mazda 6 2008 with 4banger
he is not very mechanically inclined and I am an old school guy
points etc.
anyway he was on a trip over the past weekend and he called and said his engine was making noise and held the phone to it and it was clanking away. so I told him to check the oil, which was basically empty, he added two quarts and that brought it back near normal but still clanking.
so I went with truck and trailer and got him and car..well got home and found oil that seemed like it hadn't been changed in 20000 miles or so but it had no more than 6000 on it, so I topped it off and started engine and tried to pinpoint noise with stethoscope and it sems to be top endm..whew at first I thought it was bottom end (well dont know which is better) anyway I noticed oil in what I will call a cam end cap looks like a freezeout plug. ..so I continue and pull off plastic engine cover and there seems to be.a leak in the valley there ..I am goin to try to attach pics..I read that we should have had the valves adjusted at 60k at present about 70k..should it be that loud???
also getting a po421 cat

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[dmention7]

Looks to me like maybe a leaky valve cover seal. Would explain the oil around the plugs and dripping down in your 3rd pic. Would also explain the low oil level, depending on how long its been leaking for.

I don't recall on this motor... are the lifters hydraulically adjusted or shimmed?

 

[mndsm]

I don't know if they're HLA's either.... I wanna say they are. Seems like something they'd do.

 

[jp3]

Looks to me like maybe a leaky valve cover seal. Would explain the oil around the plugs and dripping down in your 3rd pic. Would also explain the low oil level, depending on how long its been leaking for.

I don't recall on this motor... are the lifters hydraulically adjusted or shimmed?

i dont know on valves but its got that VVT which I have read could be cause of a knocking sound caused by a locking pin.dint know if that means a broken pin or not??

 

[mndsm]

One other thing to consider- the 2.3 at least on the mz3 had a bad timing tensioner/vvt actuator that caused valve tick like you're describing. Not sure if it extended to the mz6.