Low engine power?

Yea it wasn't too difficult, I had to fix a crossover leak and I went ahead to replace the manifold gasket, just for the sake of been in that far. The car took a couple tries to start then it started up and was making noise, I think it was the lifters but I'm not sure. Right now it just seems like I have some excessive clearances in the valve train. I checked pushrods and only one had some stress marks and it was very slightly bent, could only fit a post it note under it on a level surface

Yep. And do you have any insight?

Alright. Basically I was leaning towards a running compression test, a cylinder Leakdown, or get a dial indicator and measure cam lobe lift and compare it to stock height. Sound like I'm on the right track?

I recently did a lower intake manifold gasket on my car and I replaced the plugs/wires, air filter, and all the gaskets along the way. After I was finished I started the car up and at first the car was really noisy in the top end but it quieted down after about 10-20 seconds, but it was still there.

I was worried I messed something up so after about 2000 miles I tore it down AGAIN, replaced gaskets with ac delcos, all the pushrods were in the correct location, no broken parts. As I was putting the pushrods back in I noticed one of the pushrods had a little stress mark on it, I put it all back together without changing it because it was on the front head so it is easy to get to. I go to start it and it was running just fine but it seemed to have a smooth idle but it felt like it was loping a little (no rpm fluctuations) and I still had a hesitation and no power.

Basically my question is, can there only be one pushrod messed up? If it was bent wouldnt it cause a miss? Could it bend and not bend a valve? How could it bend?

I dont know anymore its driving me nuts though.

Compression was good, lowest was on the cylinder with the weird looking pushrod but the numbers were like 205 to 195 so I didnt think it was bent.

Forgot to add to. When im coasting along and I let my foot off the gas the rpms jump like 200-400

Im more concerned about the power loss and hesitation, I was worried about the tick but after not finding any damage the second go on the LIM gasket I was more curious as to why its got no power

And at idle my rpms drop to about 550 and returns to about 650-750 when I let off, I dont think its normal bc it was never noticeable, now I can visually see it drop. And when im coasting and the rpms jump I can kind of feel the engine go with it (if that makes sense?) Iv been told by alot of people its an electrical issue, but this never happend until I did the LIM gasket, so its driving me nuts having crap mpgs, no power, and a complete loss of driving excitement(complete frustration now)

Is there any chance a bent pushrod can make the cat go bad?

Before all of this I had a hesitation and about a 4-5mpg drop in economy, after about a week I had a big coolant leak comming from the coolant crossover, which at the time I thought was a headgasket leaking(also bc the intake manifold had some seepage). Once I got down and noticed the coolant leak was from the crossover and not the head I was really irritated since I bought all the gaskets/materials needed to do the head gaskets. So I went ahead and did the intake gaskets too thinking it would help get better mpg. On top of that I did the plugs/wires too, right after I did the job the first time I started said having problems.