Engine: CLANK CLANK CLANK CLANK
 

This is my freshly rebuilt motor. It's been exhibiting this sound since I've had it up and running. It's only audible inside the car if the the top is up, so it's not very loud, but noticeable. At first, I thought it was from excess valve clearances, but I have those sorted now.

The motor is a 2.0 with Pauter rods and Wiseco 9:1 pistons.

Have a listen. These recordings were made with Jeff's det can mic and a digital voice recorder, with the mic clamped to the passenger side engine mount.

In the first one, you can hear a click click click every second or so. This is with the engine cold.

In the second one, you can hear it any time the engine is under the load of acceleration and idle, but not when cruising or decelerating. This is with the engine fully warmed up.

The third one is taken with the onboard mic, showing what it sounds like with the top down.

Whaddya think?

Change the file extensions to .WMA if you want them to work.

Is the noise on cylinder 3 gone now that you adjusted the lifters

Nope, that noise is still there. It seems to be coming from cylinder 3, louder on the block than the head now that I have the det can mounted down there.

Everything on the head is torqued correctly, and all the valve clearances are within spec.

I'll be calling the machine shop tomorrow to hopefully drive it down there and see what they think.

are your cam gears tight? Mine made the death noise again and luckily it was just a loose intake cam gear.

What is your lifter clearance and I assume you have a 99-head? I know you checked it, but there is a difference between "spec" and what really works on the solid lifter head.

Check the torque on the cam caps too.

Guess I didn't mention it is a 99 head. I double-checked torque on everything when juggling shims when I had the cams out. Speaking of, that's the first times I've pulled cams off of a motor ever. It was quite enjoyable, and nice to see exactly what (who) is doing what (who) in the head.

Actual clearances were (off the top of my head) around .2mm on the intake and .33mm on the exhaust sides. I had one that was .16mm on the intake and and another at .35mm on the exhaust that I made adjustments to. What do you aim for?

It's definitely coming from the bottom end. I don't think the slightly loose valve clearance on the exhaust side was adding any extra noise actually.

I think hustler has his pretty tight, .003 IIRC, i have .008 on the intake side, and .012 on the exhaust side of my 99 head. The head is very quite with these specs.

Edit, i just realized you posted in mm and i posted my reply in inches. So:

.008 inches = 0.2032mm
.012 inches = 0.3048mm

I think the FSM states:
IN: 0.18—0.24 mm {0.008—0.009 in}
EX: 0.28—0.34 mm {0.012—0.013 in}

Conversion chart:
http://mdmetric.com/tech/cvtcht.htm

After adjusting the clearances on 4 valves, the head seems no less noisier actually. It's actually pretty quiet for solid lifters compared to well-functioning HLAs. No tapping sounds. The fuel injectors are noisier.

Compression test yields 160 psi across all 4 cylinders. This is a 9:1 motor.

When I cut spark to cylinder 2 at idle, the knock gets louder. I think it could be a loose wrist pin, but who knows, it was just rebuilt.

The motor will be coming back out and going back to the builder to have it checked out again. Just a minor setback.

I'll update here what the cause was.

You are correct that this is in the FSM. However, its not right in my experience. My builder set mine at .004 on the intake, .009 on the exhaust. My head is silent, its nice.

When I discovered my lifter problem I grabbed a big ass crow bar and put it on my temple to listen for the kock. It was not in the block, it was in the head and I could hear which cylinder and which side it was on. Everyone told me it was a spun rod bearing, including the guys at the dyno shop.

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Did I say Wiseco? I meant JE pistons.

That looks to me like pretty severe detonation.

+1

That's what I thought. But this is with no turbo, base timing map, and pretty rich fuel map under break-in conditions. So I'm sending the fuel injectors off to get cleaned and flow tested. If those results come up fine, I don't know what the hell happened to this piston.

Can it be agreed upon that this is the cause of the knocking sound?

^^ That sounds like the culprit. Do you by any chance know what your piston to cylinder wall clearances were?

Your problem & sound could have been that piston being too loose & "slapping".

The pistons' rings & ringlands don't look nasty enough to have been severe detonation.

No idea on the piston to cylinder wall clearances, but the shop is competent enough that they would have checked it.

There is a little bit of pitting on top near the melted edge.

They gave the block and bearings a clean bill of health. Its a good thing I caught this early. I'll be putting this back in the car over the next week.

mine was a little worse :giggle:

The vibration damper may be worn out and the timing marks shifted, thus making you set the timing much more advanced than you think.

It was a new damper.

There's no way this happened to the piston while it was in my possession. I won't be taking anything to that shop in the future. In fact, I won't be taking anything to a shop unless it needs machine work. I'd only need a few extra tools to rebuild a block myself. It would be worth my time and effort just to know that my pistons look ok. Hell, right now I'd feel better if I tore into the block to inspect the other pistons with my own eyes.

Did I say the motor would be back in over the next week? I meant 7 months.


No more knocking sounds besides my noisy 99 head. Valve lash will be readjusted to slightly tighter specs (thanks snowboarder and hustler) when I do the exhintake mod. :)

I detune my car if I take it to the shop.

I would never ever ever ever pay somebody to remove the engine, even it if does take me several months to get off my ass and put it back in. I wouldn't take it to a shop for any reason. :)

Wait, I do take it to a shop to get it aligned, but I'm the one who drives it onto the rack.

I set my rev limiter to 2500 rpm the one time I took mine to a shop.

What did the builder say in the end? I guess you were just SOL?