Engine rattle at cold start

[betterthanexpected]

i have a 81 pickup have had it for about 2 years . my motor started knocking a little a few weeks a ago. not sure what going on.
just found the site a few days ago.
i adjusted the valves it seemed to help it stopped rattling right away.
next day cold start rattle ratttle rattle. clears up after a few mins. whats going on here i saw that u can ajust the pump timing not brave enough yet to try that . saw the diaphram post seems simple enough to replace have not looked yet. could it be the injectors where can a fellow get new one? are they available?
also my tranny rattles at the gear shifter i have developed a habit of wiggling it to stop the noise it seems like the shifter is to heavy or is it the tranny going bad ? i love this truck i want to keep driving it any info will be a lot of help thanks.

[betterthanexpected]

my truck would not start so i bypassed the ipc and cut the wires to the pump now its allways in the on position. choke cable thru firewall to stop the motor.

[asavage]

If the knocking goes away within, say, fifteen seconds, look hard at your oil filter first. The anti-drainback valve on the cheaper filters fails and allows the filter to drain back into the sump overnight.

Next most likely, from your symptom description, would be a failed injector. It might be leaking down overnight, or may have a poor cold spray pattern. There is a good discussion of SD injectors in this thread.

The DPC module (the "black box" that controls the IPC motor you disconnected) has a fairly common failure of a relay; it can be repaired. Details are in this thread.

The shift lever does rattle in neutral on transmissions with lots of miles on them. The cross pin gets loose in the bores. However, the transmissions also eat front mainshaft and front countershaft bearings, esp. if the oil isn't kept pristine. Lots more information in this thread.

Please edit your Profile (click on "Profile" at the top of any page) and add your truck's details to your Signature field; it will cut down the number of times people ask you what year your truck is, or which cab it has, or whatever.

HTH