Good evening y'all,
So this is just kind of a project car for me at the moment possibly to be a daily driver. I inherited this car from my room mate it was running quite roughly and was complete crap. so our first presumption was that the wiring harness had finally given out due to brittle and almost melted wires. So those were replaced and it started running well again for a couple weeks. after that it started with a rough idle, misfires, and reduced power again. SOOOO basically it sat in the driveway for about a month. Fast forward to now and my car crapping out i'm fixing it up as a replacement for myself. so i tore the front end off and pulled the top timing cover and checked timing and found it was maybe 2 or 3 teeth off. so after getting it back into time and putting everything back together i have a knocking sound. it isn't a sounds i've really ever heard before. it doesn't sound like it is coming from the cam but i honestly don't know so i'm asking for your help figuring out what's going on. here is a link to the video the sound isn't the best being from my phone but it seems to capture the sound.

 

After you repositioned the belt, did you hand-rotate the engine via the crank two full revolutions and re-check the timing mark alignment? What I've found on doing 1.8T timing jobs is that if you put the cam sprocket directly on the timing mark, when you pull the pin on the hydraulic tensioner, it retards the cam by a tooth. When I do them, I advance the cam one tooth, put on the belt, and the tensioner pulls it perfectly into time.

 

i did actually. much to my surprise it was actually right on point. I guess the next stop is pulling the oil pan to check the pick up and then replacing the cam shaft chain tensioner

 

Have you tried putting a screwdriver against various parts of the engine to see where it is the loudest? That sounds like it could be a cam chain tensioner.