Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting horrible engine noise

Here's a tip that I used years ago when I was still working on cars for a living to try to isolate noises: Find a long screwdriver, the thin the better. I use a tune up screw driver which is designed to get to the mixtures screws on carburetors. Put the metal tip on part of the engine (BE VERY CAREFUL AROUND MOVING PARTS LIKE BELTS!!!) and put your ear up to the handle part. Move the screw driver around to different parts of the engine until you hear the noise the loudest and most times you will be in the area the cause of the noise is in. In this case if it is a bearing you will probably hear the noise the loudest from the bottom of the engine, maybe try "listening" to the block where it meets the oil pan. A lifter would be loudest on the head. I'm not familiar with the V6 water pump location but if it is easy to get at you can use this to check it out too. I've isolated bad alternator bearings the same way.
If you want play with this just as a test fuel injectors are a good place to start.
This is like the poor man's alternative to a stethoscope.
Hope this helps!

i was thinking about that roz, and i have come to the conclusion that its because every rod knock i have ever heard has been on a car old (like 80's old). no sound insulation anywhere on most of those older cars, and that damned astro was no exception...

i still dont understand why you cant drive a contour with a rod knock though,i have driven cars with rod knock, and other than a slight performance decrease and a loud noise, it wasnt that bad.

oh and roz, if a mpotor has synthetic in it, wont that quiet the noise??

and damned if my dads old ramcharger didnt run forever with rod knock. i kept expecting it to go any day...last i saw it it was getting a new motor at 273,000 miles, after 100,000 miles of rod knock.

there has to be something about these newer motors (maybe the material they are made out of???) that keeps then from being at least driveable with rod knock.

With V6 if your Rods are knocking....you better answer soon....... With Rod knock, bolts are torque to yield. I would think that with excessive clearance and the fact that we have weak rods to begin with will cause you to spin bearings. If you fix it now you won't have to purchase new crank kit, etc. You could probably get away with new bearings, grind crank and purchase new rod bolts..... If I did my rebuild again, knowing what I know now...I would have purchased new aftermarket rods and pistons...not racing just something better than what the factory offers...

Hodge Podge,
Did you ever find out what happened to your engine? Mine's been making a rattling noise that seems the same as your description. I've been driving mine for about 1,000 miles since it began.

For anyone wondering why I would drive my '99 SVT with a severe engine noise for that long, my contour is my beater car. It has been hit twice by idiot drivers and has never been the same since. It creaks, rattles, has a warped dash, and overall is a clunker (with only 57,000 miles).

Thanks,
Dave

Dredging up old posts, because I'm getting some wierd noises, too.

But, reading through this drama, there's a couple of things I have to say.

First of all, I'm no expert, but I've been reading up on this problem a lot of late, and here are a couple of other tidbits.

According to "the master," there seems to be a problem with our sinter-forged rods stretching, esp on the 2.5s. He has found this by measuring engine parts of engines that have had bearing failure. I think, basically, what happens is the rod stretches, and (talk about tight tolerances) the piston starts striking the valve, or maybe carbon buildup on the valve. The impact leads to hammering of the rod bearing (causing the oil film to fail, etc.) which leads to bearing failure. Point being: it doesn't matter how much oil you use, or what kind of owner you are, etc. This is a case of a manufacturing process that seemed like a good idea at the time, but just isn't working too well out here in the real world.

Now, another thing that's pretty normal when the car is under load is pinging, which is caused by pre-detonation. Some of the things that Hodge Podge describes reminds me of a pinging discussion from another board. Still, pinging shouldn't occur normally at high rpm, but will occur often under severe load--high effort, low rpm (around 2500); IOW, while "chugging" the engine. Pinging could be made worse by carbon deposits, or other tuning issues.

See here, and here for more info on where I'm coming from with this.

I had this noise also. Started out faint at low rpms, only under zero acceleration. It was just there when you were steadily cruzing down the highway(60mph) It was not there at idle or full throttle. I drove the car hard for about 7000 miles. then, the rattle started moving up the rpm range. Changed to 3000, then 4000, then 5000. Next the rattle changed to on throttle accell. then a week later a second echo rattle appeared. this one had a lower pitch and it only happened on deceleration. So I had a high pitch rattle on accel and a low pitch rattle on decel. A week later the rattle got intolerable loud(you could even feel the rattle in the gas pedal) It now rattles at idle and all rpms. Using the screw driver method, I placed the sound inside the cam chain cover. I believe that I have broken cam chain tensioners and the rattle is the chain slapping around. One evidence for this is that the initial stages of the rattle were only when maintained a steady speed, this would be when the cam chain is the most relaxed and able to slap around. Can anyone give me a list of all parts and part numbers I would have to buy to replace the cam tensioners and guides - gaskets etc.?
Hope this helps you and me.
Eric

Eric>What type of engine do you have, also how many miles, transmission, etc...

Let me make this problem harder. I also have a rattle, it originally only started at about 3500 RPMs, now I can pick it up at around 2500. The higher the RPMs, the louder the noise. Why is this now harder? I have a Zetec & evidently the other guys had Duratecs...