Oh fukn help me. It's the end. What is this sound my engine is making?
 

So my new motor is in and it idles.

But, it sounds like this:



or for shitty photobucket video go here

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3.../th_car002.jpg

I've never heard a built motor before IRL so I don't know if it's supposed to sound like a fucking diesel. Opinions?

Here's the relevant parts list or at least the parts that could affect the sound:

Belfab rods
FM 9:1 wisecos
FM head
stock bearings
wiseco/fm supplied rings
stock cams
gt3071
tial wg
tial bov

aggh what the fucking hell.

sounds like really really band valve tick! and i think a engine knocking is a lil more horrible than what i heard in your video! i would suspect lifter clearance! maybe you have to much clearance between your cams and lifters!

Or too much clearance between forged pistons and block? Does it get better when it warms up? What's the valve lash set to?

My engine was ticking loud like that after I took the lifters apart to clean them. Do you have solid lifters? Go for a short drive to get sufficient oil to hydraulic ones.

No, it's pretty much the same warmed up or cold. I think that was warm.

I don't know what the valve lash is. I will find out. As for cylinder clearances, I forget but will find out too. I am pretty sure it is whatever was reccommended by FM/wiseco.

more guru advices please!

are you getting oil pressure?

the oil pump is irealivant to the noise but could cause noise like that if there is no oil getting supplied! kinda like when your car sit for a while and when you first turn it on and you get lifter tick till they get oil to them!

There is oil pressure.

This doesn't sound like rod knock to you all?

No, rod knock is louder and more terrifying IME.

rod knock to me sounds like sombody with a sledge hammer banging the side of your engine!

plus the ticking in you video seems to fast at idle to be rod knock!

Here's some advice: STOP REVING IT LIKE AN IDIOT AND TURN IT OFF!!1!

Seriously, stop running it what so ever. I don't care if it's your daily driver, you will not turn the engine on until you diagnosis, locate, and eliminate the sound, understand?

Did you build the engine? Did you check piston height before putting the head on? What's your timing look like? Solid lifters I'm guessing? Double check oil level, it'll require a lot more starting with a brand new engine, just like it's an extra 1/2 qt or so if you change your filter vs. leaving the old one on.

Hard to tell from the vid but collapsed piston skirt from heat/abuse? Causes pistons to slap the wall, I had this happen on a previous car from sustained boosting.

I was thrown off by the revving, don't run the engine till fixed. True knock is loud (like knocking on a desk), this doesn't sound that loud.

AYE AYE CAPITAN!

I am going to get it towed tomorrow back to the shop that built the motor to ask them to figure out what the problem is.

Quesiton though: how do i diagnose and eliminate the sound without turning the engine on? Was that a koan you posed to me?

The block and the head are stock height, neither were decked. I have no clue what my timing looks like. The noise has my brain befucked and i can't think shit. Oil level is ok.

Piston skirt?

this is a fresh motor, no boost experienced yet at all. This is it's first startup :(

this is not how i want to break the motor in :(

-added youtube embed for non photobucket bullshi

trailer the car to the guy how built the motor! turn it on in front of him and say WTF! :vash:

If those are stock hydraulic lifters you should go drive it or set the lash for solids. Reving at idle won't pump the lifters back up for zero lash.

Rod and bearing problems will sound much worse.

Is oil getting to the head?

thats what i was thinking!

The part on both the intake and exh sides that stick down past the wrist pin. s they are the thinnest part of the piston, they can be warped. In my experience (running cast pistons at 15psi for ~1min) they can warp in towards the rod ever so slightly causing piston slap. This can score cylinder walls thus don't run the motor.

If it's the first start, talk to the builder. I've never had an engine make sounds like that after a build.

Oh touche, did the shop know of that little trick Mazda built into the head gaskets? If you flip it upside down it'll look perfectly normal aside from blocking the oil to the head.

I will allow you 15 seconds of run time to turn it on, take off the oil cap, check for oil, and shut it off. No more.

I thought the last engine to get hydraulic lifters was the '97, avitar pic is a second gen, that's why I assumed it was solid lifters.

i think 99 and up are solids!

What were your piston to wall clearances?
Are you sure you put the pistons in the right direction?

yes


I'm thinking the flipped head gasket has merit, which could really suck. Well, at least for the shop that built the motor. And, for you for more downtime. I was wondering why I hadn't seen a paypal. I think I know now. Good luck getting it sorted out.

Oh, and take down that video now before your shop sees it and blames you for all of the internal damage.

Yes, it has solid lifters.

How does one check for oil getting to the head? Open oil cap while engine is running and peer in and look for splish splash?

the fun way?

:giggle:

take your valve cover off and start turning the engine over!

Pop the valve cover off and see if you have oil everywhere. While it's off measure all the valve clearances.

Yep. That sounds a lot like the lifter tick from a brand new engine if its not primed properly before that first start, save that its continous where that usually goes away after about 1 second. My guess is valve train noise brought on by some sort of oiling issue.

Thanks for informing me. Shows how ignorant I am about NB miatas :)

I hear he knows what he's talking about. I forgot replace my cap once and it made a small mess in roughly 10 seconds. You'll be able to tell if there's oil up there with the cap off and the engine running. Just don't eat the apple, run it briefly only.

Sounds like no oil up top.

I would make sure to be there if the shop takes off the head. Then if it turns out they installed the HG on wrong they can't come up with some BS excuse to try and COP out of the repair.

I may have your answer. I had the exact same sound when i built my motor. Was coming from the head to. Check your cam gear bolts, make sure they are tight. I thought mine were tight but they wern`t and the little pin on the cam shaft wore an oval groove in my cam gear so every time the gear was spinning it was clicking since it wasnt tight. Drove like that for a week, then finally pulled the motor, i was kind of pissed i had to pull the whole motor for a stupid cam gear bolt from being loose but it was worth it. SO check it out!

sounds like the first stage of a spun rod bearing. The knock sound is your piston hitting the head, the more you run your engine the more worn down the bearing will get as it just keeps spinning so it will just continue to get louder.

I would also throw my $.02 in and say it's valve/head related. Spun bearings do sound similar, but in my experience early on you only hear it under load, at idle or revving with no load I have never heard it. Could be wrong, I have only dealt with two. One of which I beat on until it locked up and broke all kinds of shit. :giggle:

I also haven't dealt with solid lifters, but if it was HLA I would have said look there. With new dry lifters, my rebuild took 10 minutes of driving to finally fully stop ticking, at idle for the first few minutes it sounded like one was broken or something.

Random question, but does it make the same sort of sound if you turn the engine over by hand? Say you just put a 21mm o the crank bolt and turn it a few times. Also I would advise to pull off the valve cover and turn the engine by hand to see if you get oil in the head.

YES YES YES.

I had this problem a few months ago and had to re-torque the cam caps and it fixed it. It was the same noise. If this is a new motor you should trailer it back to the builder and he should re-shim for free.

If it were an oil pressure problem, 30seconds or so running without oil in the head would be disasterous and it would make worse noises than it is now. Its the lifters.

Turning the motor by hand won't make oil pressure.

what if the guy that built the motor put the head gasket on upside down/backwards and blocked the oil feed hole?

Then the cam would already be fused to the journals and I bet it would make a much more interesting sound.

Without watching the video, I'm going to guess the valve shims need to be replaced with proper ones. Here's a thread that has the instructions on how to do it.

https://www.miataturbo.net/forum/t35265/

DING DING DING STRANGES127 WINS THE PRIze!!!!

It was the cam gear. It wasn't quite bolted down properly and was banging against the sheet metal. Fu YOU little nut, I fu you in the face with my wrench! HA HA HA IT LIVESSSS


Time for break-in! :) :laugh:

Holy shit that's badass.

Pretty much last suggestion, and an easy fix.

Good deal, just don't freak out next time.

Congrats on finding the problem. How wide is the grin on your face?

what are the chances of that! haha glad your car is fix and it was nothing major!

Glad you found the problem and it was minor. Also good is you didn't tow the car back to the builder, raise hell and then they find out it was that simple. Saved some face...

Well, the builder should have tq'd the fucking bolt properly. So I wouldn't defend shit for them.

Make sure you break it in right. Lots of load *out of boost*, lots of vacuum, more and more RPM as you go. All the break-in is done in the first 50 miles of driving.

no synthetics for at least 500-1000 miles.

I have nothing to contribute to this thread but I'm 98% sure that I saw your car last week at York Automotive in Mt Airy.

Yes MicaCeli, that was me. FYI we're having a dyno day there next saturday. $50/car. If some people don't show (likely) we will have spots.

That's the plan.

OK For you aftermarket ECU guys I have a fresh question:

I'm trying to calibrate base timing on my hydra. Idle is fairly smooth, it idles ok between 12:1 and 15:1. A little roughness but the RPMs are steady at 1000. The tables are stable on one cell for both fuel and spark.

BUT when I look at the hydra readout, the timing number is jouncing all over between 6 and 12 several times a second. If I hold a bit of throttle 1-2%, the timing readout is stable.

WTF is this new shit? I can set the base timing by reducing the timing for that 1-2% cell and flashing the light but that is a workaround. Any ideas why the numbers are sloppy at idle?

If it's anything like MegaSquirt it's using timing numbers off a map, which may or may not be tuned well at idle. See if you've got 6s and 12s in those cells. Most of us run something closer to 17*.

That said, you should have to set the ECU to a standard static timing setting, so it holds it regardless of bouncing around cells at idle. I'm not sure what the procedure is with Hydra, but you HAVE to know exactly what advance number the ECU is throwing down, and adjust your CAS or trigger angle until the timing light matches this number.

When you hold it stable is the crank pulley notch even close to the numbers Hydra is giving you?

Even if so, I'd want a static base timing number instead of trying to match the light with dynamic info on a screen. That's about like watching your AFR and boost gauges at the same time while driving to fix a fuel table cell.

For reference on my 94 with MS I idle at about 13.5AFR. Anything above that it starts to get rough and the afr start to bounce around a lot.

I installed a 323GTX PCV which makes a very loud hiss. Is this normal? I'm wondering if something is f'ing with my vacuum.

Did you put it on backward or something? Did you buy it at like autozone because those are POS's. Get an oem PCV from a dealer.

Wooo fucking right. I knew it had to be it was the exact same sound of my motor. Did you put your cams on or your builder? The first time i put mine on it happened. I gave it to my builder to fix it he put them on with some threadlocker havent had the problem since. Im very glad it fixed your problem. Have fun with boosting :)

No! Fu u tard I bought it from frikken um rosenthal mazda. It's a damn E301-13-890A


So this fucker shouldn't be hissing like mad?

Whoa....You better back up a step before I rip off your head and throat fuck you.

No no, I meant that with affection.

This is a brand new PCV valve, would it really be fd like that?