I have a 92 mazda mx3 1.8L v6 (K8), there is a knocking coming from inside the engine, it sounds like its on the drivers side. I tried to do an oil change, that seemed to make it worse. You can clearly hear it even when driving the car, how can i tell if its either a piston slapping/knocking, a lifter, or a rod. It has to be one of them, someone told me that it could be the injectors, but from my experience and reading for the last hour, injectors make a quiet ticking, this is more like a lifter or a piston knocking. I know that the engine was run out of oil before i baught it, it had a bad water pump, which made it over heat a numerous ammount of times which i just changed last week which by the way was a bi*ch. I plan on having the engine rebuilt sometime or thinking about the klz swap maybe. I think i need new head gaskets also because it burns oil. Cylinder #2 has oil in the plug, and it blows a little bit of smoke sometimes alot. It doesn't feel like its loosing that much compression. any idea's????