Please Help - Ticking Sound - 5 Cylinder

Howdy Friends,

It's been a while. Been trying to troubleshoot a ticking sound coming from the engine of my 2004 T1N. Ticking is very acute, sort of like a very strong and rapid piezo electric ignitor.

While it would occur most on cold-starts and not everytime, it's become almost constant over the last couple of days. I've recording a video. It can be viewed and listened to Here.

Please help. I've been pulled in many directions - licky injector, turbo resonator, harmonic balancer, water pump (replaced this past spring)

Can anyone diagnose this for me? Please watch the video. Thanks!!!

-Rich
(Sorry for ginormous photos. Tried to edit the post and correct. Anyone know how to use simple markup to resize how they display?)

Re: Please Help - Ticking Sound - 5 Cylinger

Black death. My guess is that is blow by around the injectors.

Re: Please Help - Ticking Sound - 5 Cylinger

Perhaps pulling your injector cover will help to rule out Black Death. If it does, perhaps you should invest in a mechanics stethoscope to find out exactly where the sound is the loudest, and thus likely better determine the source/cause of the sound.

Well, doesn't appear to be black death. I've routinely removed the injector cover (every other oil change, ~20K Miles) to monitor for leakage. Looks this morning, the same as it always has (just turned 246K, I've owned it for 100K).

You can see the photos I took this morning by clicking here (Google Photos)

Any other thoughts? Might be one of those times where we need to visit an expert....Dennis (LinDen), John Robison (JE Robison Service) , Carl Bridges (MBoB)

-Rich

You could remove the serpentine belt for a few seconds to eliminate alternator, water pump, air compressor pulley/clutch, and idlers.

Dougflas said:

You could remove the serpentine belt for a few seconds to eliminate alternator, water pump, air compressor pulley/clutch, and idlers.

Click to expand...

Will try this next. Marcia (wife) suggested we try this a couple of days ago.

I was at the mechanic's today and one of the technicians was explaining how a bit of oil on a belt can harden up when heated, like shellac, and make a ticking noise each time the hard spot hits the pulley.

Could be bad idler pulleys or other pulleys; removing belt is a good diagnostic to narrow it down. When did you last replace your belt tensioner? I think my first lasted about 150k. I did my idler pulleys around 200-225k.

Other things to investigate would be water pump, fan, and maybe high pressure fuel pump.