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General >> Problems >> engine noise help required please
(Message started by: sardine on Mar 10th, 2005, 10:11pm)

Title: engine noise help required please
Post by sardine on Mar 10th, 2005, 10:11pm
Hello everyone, I'm new to the forum but am already impressed by the atmosphere and level of knowlege of the members.  I hope that in time I can contribute myself but at the moment am in need of some advice:

I bought a 95 cosworth a few weeks ago and when testing it found the very slightest rattle for less than a second on 1st startup.  From what I read, I figured this was to be expected at 80000 miles and for the price I could live with it.  

Anyway - I did about 1000 miles in great comfort and was extremely happy.   Nevertheless i dropped it into the local garage who have been very good so far with my other cars and just asked for filters and fluids type service.

The mechanic has a granada cosworth and I mentionned to him about the rattle which I felt was worsening ( it was bitterly cold and my drive is on a gradient)

He wanted to hear it cold and so I left it there and the following morning received a worrying phonecall which basicaly ammounted to either 1. get 1000GBP work done to replace chains etc or run it and hope for the best - although he didn't hold out much hope for the longevity of the engine.

Looking at the site it appears there are many owners with this problem and only a minority have expereinced the dreaded consequences of chain skipping and wrecking the engine. Thnaks to some useful advice from the list I'll look into renewing the tensionner but can't really afford the whole job.  I'll stick to WOT start up at the moment and park facing down the drive - this seems to have sorted the problem

The reason this is not in the 'rattle at startup' thread is that  this evening I listened to the car tickover whilst warm - it makes a ch ch ch... ch ch ch sound - tempo is a bit like tennessee tenessee similar to the noise a train makes....  It's audible over the engine at idle but not really loud.

It doesn't sound like I would imagine the chain to sound but it doesn't sound right to my untrained ear.

My concern is that the local garage have basically written the car off - to the point where the mechanic said he'd be doing me a disservice to change the oil as I would be wasting my money.  As I see it - if the chain is so loose it's making noise when warm then I'm in real trouble but if it's something totally diferent then I may have many more miles in this car if I can get it sorted.

What do you think?



Title: Re: engine noise help required please
Post by nick on Mar 10th, 2005, 10:38pm
I had a similar noise om my 98 and it tuned out to be an exhaust manifold starting to crack, just a hairline crack but enough to make a noise.
It might not be the case for you but its easy to check, mine was the passenger side and from talking to others it is quite common.

It may be a start, failing that why not try Ford if you are not happy with what the mechanic is telling you.

Also the 24v is funny when it comes to oils, you MUST use synthetic oil, do you know if the garage has done this.

A good read is on here already regarding oils

http://www.fordscorpio.co.uk/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=Advice;action=display;num=1110048254;start=11#11

Dont know whether this is a start or not, but i would be starting here.

I know im sounding synical and please those of you who run and own garages dont take offence but some places dont know what they are doing, and a business is a business, we all need to make money. Some garages are unscrupulous, not that i am saying the place you used is.

HTH

NIC

Title: Re: engine noise help required please
Post by Eddie on Mar 10th, 2005, 10:40pm
You also have to train your ears to filter out the injector 'chatter'.

eddie

Title: Re: engine noise help required please
Post by gaz01gaz on Mar 10th, 2005, 11:56pm
you could also use the trick most of use when starting cold,floor the throttle pedal hard when first crancking until oil light goes out,then release the pedal and re-crank and hey presto no rattle,this primes the hydraulic  tensioners for you,,,hope this helps,,,gaz

Title: Re: engine noise help required please
Post by admin on Mar 11th, 2005, 1:51am
This might sound a bit weird but in my experience (and my chain did snap) there was not a great deal of difference in the costs of repairing an engine that has snapped a chain compared to just replacing the chains on their own.

The Cosworth engine will bend 4 valves when it goes but they are not too expensive to replace or you could pick up a spare set of heads from a breakers and keep them in the garage. The expensive bit is the labour for the stripdown and re-assembly.

As long as you have Recovery service cover I'd just run the car with the rattle - it may never snap and if it does then the repair cost is not much more than repairing it now.

Mine was fine until I started towing a heavy trailer which is when it let go on the M6 - the AA recovered it from Carlise to Exeter and gave me a hire car for 3 days whilst we repaired it.

Steve

Title: Re: engine noise help required please
Post by colinw on Mar 11th, 2005, 4:37am
sorry i have disagree when my chain jumped some teeth i damaged a lot more than 4 valves in fact if i remember correctly there were about 18 damaged ,i know it was a lot because i ended up just replacing the lot ,but luckily the pistons did survive enough to be reused i will admit that some of the valves only had minor marks on them but a lot were certainly damaged enough that they were left for the machine shop to remove or maybe i was just unlucky in that in my case the engine just stopped dead ,and the rac guy just cranked it over until it started!!

Title: Re: engine noise help required please
Post by admin on Mar 11th, 2005, 7:57am
Yes of course you are correct - teeth junmping would cause more damage whereas mine snapped and stopped dead. Further cranking caused no more damage.

I guess if you can find a couple of spare heads just in case then it's still worth waiting until it happens, otherwise maybe not.

Steve



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