3L Tapping / Ticking?

[Teebs]

I have a tapping or ticking noise coming from my 3L, not sure if it's always been there or not but I've heard it all this summer. It's very faint and I would just assume it's valve noise but I'm digging deep into this car right now trying to find out why I can't pass an emissions test. New cat, plugs, clean filter. Was failing HC, CO and NOx before that, now I'm just failing NOx and just scraping by on HC (Limits 60, I'm at 51 PPM, up from 21PPM 2 years ago)

idle[1] | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

What am I hearing? Sounds to be coming from the head at cylinder 6? Video gives it a bit of an echo sound...

Thanks, Tim.

 

[YOOOO]

Could be a number of things, but since you're failing emissions I'm guessing it could be an exhaust leak, probably from one of the headers.

I can't really tell anything from the video, sorry

 

[Teebs]

Using a ghetto stethoscope (Tube and funnel with funnel against your ear) the sound is the loudest when your listening to the water pump cam driven pulley. So right at the end of the head. Not sure if the sound is from the end of the head, or if the cam is carrying the sound outside the engine via the cam and pulley? It sounds a little too loud to be just valve noise...

 

[mrspindlelegs]

idle[1] | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

What am I hearing? Sounds to be coming from the head at cylinder 6? Video gives it a bit of an echo sound...

Thanks, Tim.

I don't know if this is applicable to your motor since you didn't identify the year and car that it was sourced from. There is a TSB that covers a ticking problem on #6 cylinder on more recent Duratec 3.0L engines. Terry Haines posted this over on FCO:

http://www.fordcontour.org/topic/12520-late-30-cam-tick/

Here is another source on the same issue:

http://www.autocarepronews.com/issue/article.aspx?contentid=93869

I do not recall if all these engines are VVT design (may be irrelevant?) but at least the procedure is pretty simple.