Cold Start Noise

[conaero]

Timing does not slip, the very end bit of the guide snaps off and sits at the bottom of the timing case. The guide is a tenner but whilst you are in there with the chain off you may as well replace it and all the guides as a kit (£600)…so the costs start to ramp up. Then you could change the variators too (£800)

Front cover gasket is £25 then the crank pulley can snap whist trying to get it off so that’s another £400.

Labour, it’s 2-3 days depending upon how far you go.

As for potential damage, well if your snapped guide stays in the bottom of the timing case then it will be ok for a while but the slack, rattling chain will end up grenadine but not in the short term. It will just get louder and loader as the wear progresses.

 

[Blueflash]

Stethoscope arrive this afternoon. All I hear is “whoosh”, which I reckon is mainly the sound of fluids rushing around. I’ve tried it at the bottom of the V, further up the timing case on each side, and the on the rocker covers. There are more noises up on the rocker covers, presumably lifters where the valve train is, and the injectors more audible up top, but there’s no weird rattling, banging, clonking, dinging, scraping or anything that sounds ‘wrong’.

Both banks sound d@mn near identical, so far as I can tell.

Motor sounds a lot smoother in real life, phone makes it sound like a bag of spanners.

Stethoscope a great buy for £15, probably best used to listen to an engine before it breaks, so that it’s easier to diagnose a fault. Worth listening as part of basic monthly checks.

 

[conaero]

As you have it out, stick it on the AC pump and the alternator, might as well but sounds like good news.

 

[Blueflash]

As you have it out, stick it on the AC pump and the alternator, might as well but sounds like good news.

Has a longer listen and tried more places. Nothing that particularly jumps out.

Listening on the left side, up around where the oil filler cap is quieter than opposite area on right side. I reckon that’s because there’s a big pulley lower down on the right side. EDIT: I can distinguish a very quiet “brrrr” tapping noise at both those locations. It’s not particularly pronounced though, and at first I wasn’t sure whether I was just imagining it. It sounds exactly like when I listen to the injectors, so reckon it’s just the injectors resonating in those areas. It doesn’t sound like a ‘defect’.

Obviously, being a V engine, those two areas don’t precisely correspond to one another, but that top front right area is definitely slightly noisier than the rest of the places that I can access with the listening probe. This is only audible with the probe, and I’m fairly certain it’s down to the location of that big pulley.