How far can an amateur go with an "in frame" rebuild?
I'm working on tracing down a very aggressive load dependent tap / tick in my Jeep 4.0. It's too aggressive to be a lifter, and it's coming from the "middle" of the engine height-wise, so I assume it's most likely a broken piston skirt, it's too high pitched for typical bottom end noises and the oil pressure is still good at 40 psi cold idle.
Anyway, I'm thinking about dropping the pan to look for metal, and if I don't find any, I'll start taking the head off and inspect the cam / lifters.
My question is how far can / should I go with an "in frame rebuild"?
I figure regardless of what I find in the pan I might as well throw in a new high volume oil pump.
Assuming there isn't any piston pieces and I can leave the block in the Jeep, I will pull a few main caps to check the bearings but unless they are absolutely perfect I'll probably throw some main bearings at it, and at that point it makes sense to replace the big end rod bearings as well.
I can't get to the cam bearings, so they will stay.
If it's cam and lifter related I'll replace those.
What else am I missing?
Anything else I should do or more importantly, anything I should NOT DO?