Tick under the hood

I have a '96 Blazer 4.3L V6. I blew the intake gaskets over the Labor Day weekend. A few of my friends came over to give me a hand fixing it. After replacing the gaskets and putting the engine back together it developed a tick that is constant at idle and speeds up with rpms. I didn't go below the intake and left the valve covers and heads on. the truck starts now and there isn't any coolant in the new oil. I'm thinking it may have to do with the timing/distributor and the oil pump connection. Hard to tell since there were alot of hands under the hood. Any advice would be helpful.

Also has a hard start and the engine jumps considerably once it catches

Having the same problem, are you still having it? If you fixed it what was it?

So you did the intake gaskets. Two things, did you change to oil after the gaskets were done, and secondly, and very important, as equally important, did you torque the intake bolts properly to the specified torqure values?

ok so i ended up overheating the engine with the intake gasket blowing. found out i smoked the main bearing and had to get a new engine. new problem comes out of that. one of the positive wires running to the starter was to close to the mainfold when the engine was replaced and melted to the engine causing it to ground out. can't jump it keeps feeding back and melting the jumper cables. may have blown a fusible links or as i was reading on here on another post i may have the cables backwards on the alternator (his truck was a black lead and a red ground to the alternator).