Exhaust revision and the "Tacoma Tick" vanished

Hey Everyone,
This is my first time on any forum and the main reason for me actually becoming a member is because I think I've finally rid myself of the awful tick from the driver side forward valve cover on my 1gr-fe. Had the truck for two years now and its had the tick since I drove off the lot. Im in the process of redesigning my exhaust and so far I've removed the Y-pipe, second set of cats, and everything behind it and simply installed two flowmaster hushpower DBX mufflers directly after of the downstream O2 sensor. Loud as hell on acceleration and not what I'm looking for but like I said, I'm in the redesign process and I'm just experimenting right now. The one thing I noticed immediately though was that I didn't hear the tick. I know what your thinking, this idiot doesn't realize that his truck is so loud that there's no way he'd hear the tick over the exhaust. So let me just say that warmed up at idle was when my tick was loudest,it also happens to be when the exhaust is its quietest. I've been using the old broomstick to the valve cover method since I bought this truck and its gone. Just gone. I can only hear injectors and the normal actions of the valves, but no more annoying tick, tick, tick, tick. I read somewhere on a racing forum that unequal exhaust paths can cause issues and it kinda makes sense. With the way the 1gr-fe routes its driver side exhaust, the forward driver side exhaust valve would be left with more backpressure than all the rest, especially with four catalytic converters, two extra feet of travel, and that two foot of crossover is flattened two inch pipe for ground clearance reasons I assume. This is my first run at the exhaust on this truck so we'll see how it goes. Anyhow, glad to have finally joined and hope to get to know everyone eventually.

 

interesting, subbed.

 

anyone else tried this?