Another knocking thread...

I have spent the last hour searching, but haven't found exactly what I was looking for.

I have a 97 Sport, with 134k.

Its pretty cold out right now, probably 30s, uppers 20s. I got in and started it up, let it sit for proably 20 seconds or so, then put it in gear and drove off. I pulled out of a driveway and immediately started up a hill so I gave it some gas. Immediately following I noticed a knock.

I just changed my oil probably under 150 miles ago. I knocked off the oil pressure sensor but replaced it.

When opening the hood, I noticed a coolant leak, and it warmed up rather quickly. I immediately thought and hoped it was the coolant pump, but it seemed like it was coming from the middle of the engine block, towards the top, but I did not crawl underneath to listen from there.

So I geuss what I'm wondering is did I not wait long enough before I drove off and broke something? Maybe like a rod bearing or maybe just something right underneath the valve cover? Do you think the knocking and coolant leak are isolated problems?

Up until now, I've only had to deal with suspension and steering parts, and I have a limited amount of knowledge on the internal workings of an engine.

Thanks in advance, any input would be greatly appreciated.

Kind of hard to diagnose at this distance, but if you have a coolant leak and a knock, the first thing I'd do is wiggle the water pump pulley.

I will go try my water pump pulley, though it didn't seem like the noise was coming from the right area for that.

Also, my friend said it might just be a rocker that popped off or something. It did kind of feel funny right after I pulled out of the parking spot before I got to the hill. It felt like the transmission was slipping or something, like I double checked to make sure it was in drive and not neutral. He said that that might have been the engine skipping when the rocker popped off, IDK.

So I talked to a mechanic and described to him everything that I observed. I removed the oil cap and noticed that the knocking was in rhythm with one of the middle rockers, which is where the sound seemed to be coming from. He said I should take off the valve cover and see if I can identify a bad spring, and/or as quickly as possble to prevent an oily mess turn on the engine and use a screw driver to try and feel which valve was having the problem.

So my question now is:

If one of the rockers are bad, can I replace them with some rollers like the ones I found in Summit from Mopar Performance? They mentioned something about a spacer for the valve cover. Is this the kind of thing that would drop right in or am I better off just finding some stock replacement rockers?