The hood on my car isn't the original hood, and it says nothing underneath it.

I think I made a mistake by letting my grandfather try to look at my car.. He's used to working on all these old cars with carbs... I don't know wtf he did to it today. One of those black lines he broke, it's the one that is near the battery, and runs up along side the drivers side fender, and back towards the motor. On the motor side of the line it had black tape around it like someone tried to fix it. And the part near the battery I could feel it sucking air... Before he broke it, he pinched the line and you could hear the car idle smoother. I don't know if that was a vaccum line or what, but he said it was the cruise control...? Then after he broke it, he put two screws in each end of the line.... No telling what that is gonna do, but he **** rigs everything..... I'm gonna take it to a mechanic on monday, this mechanic is my brother in laws brother and he's a good guy and wont rip me off. I was trying to avoide taking to somewhere because I'd have to pay someone.. Tomorrow I will check the plugs because that is something I know I can do. As far as the vaccum lines go, there's so many wires and lines I can't tell what from what.



The noise I am hearing is coming from the front of the car. You can hear it the loudest with the hood up on the pass side, but if you lay on the ground near the cat it also sound like it's coming from there. I've put my hand on it and tried to shake it but it doesn't seem loose.

 

Ok, once agian, check out that Chiltons manual you got from the library under vacuum lines/routing. It should tell you what is vacuum lines and which isn't. Tell me again what motor this car has in it, for whatever reason I thought this was a V6 with multiport injection, but you mention a carb on this ride? As far as the vacuum line down by the battery, yeah that is probably what that one is, unless it's coming off the EVAP charcoal canister, which is that black plastic cylinder shaped container. If it is coming from that, I'll help explain that to you later, although on a carb model there isn't much to it. Putting screws in the end is just an old school fix to keep the lines from sucking excess air throwing the idle off. Not really a big deal, just tacky. And this noise you say it's up at the motor itself near the cat? Still might be the guts in the cat all messed up. I don't know I wish I could see the car in person, I'd be of much better help. Good luck, dont get frusturated. We all went through this with our Camaros too, lol. It's what we get for buying 20 year old cars.

I hope this noise aint coming from the engine itself. Is that a possibility?

Here's another trick to try to eliminate the possiblity of the noise coming from any pullies/pumps. Remove all the belts and start the engine. Is the noise gone? If so, find out what pulley or pump is making the noise. If the noise is still there, then it wasn't obviously a pulley/pump.

 

It is fuel injected, I mentioned carbs because that's all my grandfather is used to working on. He doesn't have any experience working on newer cars with fuel injection... Well that's his excuse for not knowing what is going on with my car lol.


I don't think I seen anything on the vaccum lines in the book, but I'll check it again to make sure. It did have the spark plug wire diagram, so I'm gonna check that out today.

 

From my experience there is a very high probability that the rattle noise is coming from the catalytic converter. I've owned 4 3rd gen F-bodies and 2 of them had this problem (One other had the heat shield removed prior to my purchasing it). It usually is either a slightly loose heat shield or loose AIR pump tubing to the cat. You can remove the heat shields if you want by using a pry bar of some kind (I used the back side of a hammer). If you do, just don't park the car in any tall dry grass and you should be fine. Rattling noise like that is almost always a result of something loose in the exhaust, and like I said previously with 3rd gens it is usually the cat.

And keep that vaccuum line plugged. Make sure that there is no air being sucked through it. That will cause bad performance all around.