94' 5.7 tapping

[BAD2500HD]

Hoping that somebody can help me out , my son has a 94' chevy k1500 and the other night he was someplace he should not have been with his truck and got it stuck pretty bad and now he seem to have a tapping/tiking sound coming from the bottom end of the motor , at idle you can't hear it but when you get it up in rpm's ypu start hearing it . he told me that when we got it back on the road it was pretty load but up around 50mph it pretty much went away i was woundering if it wasn't the exhust leaking down by the donut ? he did get around to look at it some today and found that on the driverside the exhust was leaking around the donut do you guys think this is what is giving him his sound ? when he first told me about it i thought maybe a barring or the exhust could be making this sound he did have the front of his truck sitting on a log just right behind the front wheel but what worried me was he had ran it pretty hard in low range (4low) what do you guys think ?

[95Sierra2500]

Definately sounds like you've found the issue, fix that donut and it should go away. My '95 is making the same exact noise and I've just been too busy/lazy to do it.