Car makes a strange sound at idle mostly. Clears up in upper RPM's. And it's intermittent, sometimes it will not do it for a long period, then the sound will return for a while, then disappear........ Also, sometimes I can get it to sound normal after running it hard at high rpm's, then it will be quiet for a period but it will always return. I got lucky today and made the video when you can hear it.

Car drives and runs strong, just the sound is present. Does anyone know what this could be?? It's not the throwout bearing or anything drivin off the belt, i removed it and the sound is the same. BELT IS ON IN THE VIDEO, but i took it off before(a few months ago when it was doin the same thing) and sound was the same, i just drove the car back from work just now.

Click for vid.

http://home.comcast.net/~bmhawalka/carsound.MPG


Thanks,
Brian

 

The fact that it comes and goes and sounds like a raspy squeak leads me to believe its bearing or bushing or some type of friction.
Check the belt tensioner pulley, altonator and AC compressor pulley.
I think its somewhere around that fanbelt.

 

woud it matter that i REMOVED the belt though for testing?? how would they turn without the belt hooked up.................

 

All I hear is tapping. Hard to tell on little computer speakers. Check to see all the plugs are tight. Make sure there are no ex leaks, use paper if need be and last check to see what all the rockers look like.

 

yeah, it sounds like "chhh chhh chhhh chhh chhh", i'm not worried about the tapping thats valvetrain noise. You can hear it when it's idlin, but when i give it some throttle it disappears........... Sorry i couldn't record better quality audio.

 

If a plug was loose on a 96 it should set a misfire code and SES. Is the SES light on or did you check for misfire counts?

That's usually what makes the chh chh chh

 

No SES..

I have a scanner, computer doesn't say anything. No misfires, car runs perfect, it was running crappy before I changed the plugs/wires.

As far as if the plugs are in right, I recently changed all my plugs and wires. This made the car run ALOT better(had misfires) either due to a burned wire or a bad plug. And it did make the same "chh chh chh" sound before the plug/wire swap, hard to screw up twice but u never know. I will check plugs, thanks for that tip.

This doesn't sound like a spun bearing though right?

 

whoops, I should have read the post better.

 

With these speakers?????? I didn't even hear what you described.

chh chh chh got to be air shooting out a bad exhaust. Check the mainfold at the block then all the joints.

 

Sounds to me like a squeeky serpentine belt like it's not tight enough. Personally it sounds like rubber rubbing against metal.

 

My car makes a strange sound at idle, too....

 

Check your A/C pulley, bearings in these pullies are know to go bad.

 

Just from that description (my audio isn't working at the moment) it soulds to me like you need a new flywheel/flexplate, whichever you have (don't know if your car is A4 or M6).

 

I say take it to a shop that will put it on a lift and take off the dust shield and look at it for free/cheap. Then post up what they say.

 

Any half inteligent mechanic could tell you if this was the problem with just a quick 5 minuet look. So they shouldn't really charge that much if any at all.