I bought my 01 cobra last spring with about 130,000 on it, just regular bolt-ons etc.. car has always ran awesome ever since I've owned it and its in excellent condition inside and out.. Shortly after owning it I started to notice that little ticking sound that seems to be what most people talk about.. I have Googled it and read up on it and peoples thoughts etc.. ultimately just kind of passed it off as not much to worry about. Any way I've put probly 2 or 3,000 miles on the car and after getting on it pretty hard a couple times I noticed the next morning the ticking was a little louder.. I figured "maybe" / "hopefully" it was just an exhaust manifold leak getting worse after high rpms... Everything was fine the next few rides until about 2 weeks ago I went for a drive and did a little 2nd gear pull and all of a sudden right about 5,200 or so it just totally cut out and did a big "brrrruuuggghh"!! I don't think I've ever experienced a "fuel" / "ignition" cut-out before haha.. I tried once or twice more on my short trip home and it was the exact same thing... By the time I am about to pull on my street I can hear that same ticking noise but much much louder as I limped it home... no dash lights at all.. I parked it that day and have been mostly afraid to start it / drive it again.. Until just 2 days ago I finally drove it (carefully) to a very reputable mechanic the next town over where the owner and his mechanic both believed it to be in the head / lifter noise vs rod knock or anything.. it does definitely sound like it is coming from the drivers side head but it is "very loud"!.. he sent me to his machine shop guy up the road where they do alot of work on the terminators and what not.. The guy was awesome and he showed us on a pair of customers cobra heads he actually had in his shop that day about all the work they usually do to bring a 100,000+ mile cobra head back to New / better than new.. and it equates to about $4,000 @ 1 guy 8 hours a day for about a week to complete both heads... long story short, what are my options here? I feel like I don't really need to go all out on having the heads completely reworked at $4,000.. I'm leaning more towards finding some good "used" heads either on here or Ebay etc...? Has anyone here bought used heads before and had good luck with them (or bad)? And also why can't I just have my heads fixed with whatever parts are broken? Lifters? Whatever it happens to be.. do I have to pull the motor out either way to work on the heads? The machine shop owner said its much easier to pull the whole engine right out from the bottom.. Sorry for such a long post but I just wanted to get as much information / details in as possible in one shot... Thank you guys.