Timing chain tensioner going bad? (I have the old style one wth?)
Just before, I noticed that when my motor had warmed up, there was a metal on metal type of noise coming from the passenger side of the valve cover at idle. It's not TOO loud, but its loud enough that my g/f could hear it when I pointed it out with the hood popped. The sound is up towards the top.
It does NOT make the sound when it's cold or when I manually push on the throttle plate and rev it up after it's warmed up. The sound disappears but as soon as the RPM's settle to idle the sound comes back. The best way I can describe it is a rhythmic metal to metal sound, almost like a scraping. Unfortunately I didn't get a video of it because I was afraid something was wrong and wanted to visually inspect everything after I shut the car off (didn't want to do anymore damage in the event the tensioner was broken etc.)
I pulled the valve cover, everything looks good and I am about to do an oil change and look for any metal shavings or bits. One thing I DID notice though: after removal the tensioner was a bit difficult to retract to reach the holding pin (more than normal to me at least). Currently, the motor is running Mobil-1 10W-30 synthetic, changed about 3 months ago/1,000 miles. No hurry though as the car is garaged for the winter, so much salt out there it's nasty. In fact I only started it up earlier because I had just flushed the coolant and wanted to run it for a few minutes in the garage after.
Theory: my tensioner is going bad. When the motor is cold, the oil is thicker. When warmed up the oil thins at a threshold that allows the chain to make contact, but when the motor is revved up that "slack" temporarily disappears b/c stress is put on it. That is, if it is the chain/tensioner.
UPDATE: big thanks to bmexicang for letting me know that I have the old POS tensioner in my motor for some reason!! I will be getting the updated design, see if that makes a difference
It does NOT make the sound when it's cold or when I manually push on the throttle plate and rev it up after it's warmed up. The sound disappears but as soon as the RPM's settle to idle the sound comes back. The best way I can describe it is a rhythmic metal to metal sound, almost like a scraping. Unfortunately I didn't get a video of it because I was afraid something was wrong and wanted to visually inspect everything after I shut the car off (didn't want to do anymore damage in the event the tensioner was broken etc.)
I pulled the valve cover, everything looks good and I am about to do an oil change and look for any metal shavings or bits. One thing I DID notice though: after removal the tensioner was a bit difficult to retract to reach the holding pin (more than normal to me at least). Currently, the motor is running Mobil-1 10W-30 synthetic, changed about 3 months ago/1,000 miles. No hurry though as the car is garaged for the winter, so much salt out there it's nasty. In fact I only started it up earlier because I had just flushed the coolant and wanted to run it for a few minutes in the garage after.
Theory: my tensioner is going bad. When the motor is cold, the oil is thicker. When warmed up the oil thins at a threshold that allows the chain to make contact, but when the motor is revved up that "slack" temporarily disappears b/c stress is put on it. That is, if it is the chain/tensioner.
UPDATE: big thanks to bmexicang for letting me know that I have the old POS tensioner in my motor for some reason!! I will be getting the updated design, see if that makes a difference
Last edited by Storm88000
on 2013-12-12
at 10-43-15.
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