My local shop was able to have a look at the car today. They traced the ticking noise to the vacuum advance weights inside the distributor. The weights are on pins and the plastic bushings had worn out of the weights causing them to jump around and rap against the rotor shaft. They put some grease around the weights to confirm it was the noise and the noise was gone until the grease was flung off. They said they could repair it, but I told them to just go ahead and put on a rebuilt distributor, which they said was a good idea as there could be some wear in the gear and shaft also. Looks like the 229 will live a few more thousand

-Fordlords-