'03 S Lifter and/or Camshaft failure

[Qmulus]

As long as I have had my S (it now has 54k) I have had a bit of lifter noise at startup on bank one, that fairly quickly went away after ten seconds or so. Sunday I started it up to the normal tapping and let it idle for a minute or two. I went to pull it out of the garage thinking it would stop as usual, but instead of getting better it seemed to get worse. I rev'd it a bit to see if it would clear up, but it didn't, so I turned it off. If there is one thing that I have learned over the years it is to turn off the engine if it sounds bad before really bad things happen. What was surprising that the day before it sounded fine. Oil level and pressure was fine (I have a 996 cluster with pressure gauge).

It sounds like the noise is in cylinder #1 (right side, front). From some research, it sounds like a fairly common issue. A tech friend mentioned that the three chain engines often have lifter problems and I should count on replacing at least a few lifters. I think the next step is to pull the cover, but I am not looking forward to it. It figures that as soon as I have the '06 VW Jetta GLI that I just bought with a blown timing belt and bent valves going back together that now my Boxster has decided to make more work for me...

Anyway, my question to the group is if there is some other underlying problem that causes this that should be addressed? From the techs I have talked to, they just do lifters unless there is other damage like camshafts of course, but nothing beyond that. To me, if this is rather common and usually on the same cylinder, it sure sounds to me that something is going on...