My motor is making a knocking noise like someone is tapping the valve cover with a metal hammer. This noise started on my way home and then went away, as I was almost home it came back and started more serious problems like not wanting to drive and when it did drive it made horrible noises I can't even describe. I got it home immediately and let it sit, later I started it up to try and pinpoint the noise. The car can still hold idle and rev almost normally it just has a consistent tapping noise. I removed the valve cover since I thought it might be in the head but nothing looked obviously out of place, ad the oil did not have any shavings or anything in it. I would like to get ideas about what might be wrong before I begin to tear it apart. Also not check engines lights turned on, only had a code 22 but that was almost a month ago, and when it started happening I was driving the car normally at about 40 mph. Again just looking for ideas about how to approach this and what could be the cause.

 

does the noise get faster when you rev it up?

 

try a valve adjust

 

Is the noise coming from the lower half of the motor or on top? Are you sure its inside the motor and not just a bracket on the outside? Ie. Alternator, starter etc.

 

It is definitely coming from the motor close to the distributor area. You hear a tapping sound that gets faster at higher RPM's and slows with the engines speed, it initially came and went and now it is constant. Its weird since the engine still runs fine, it is hard to start but I think that more because its been sitting and the battery is dieing.

 

Does the knocking at times have a Scratch metal sound to it? if so it could be your distributor is about to give out, especially seeing how you said its coming from that area. Just a thought cause i had the same issue a year back and it ended up being a bad rotor in the distributer.

hope that helps

 

Im going to check the distributor tonight when I get off work, anything in particular to look for? Im assuming if anything is broken it will look that way.

 

Mine was easy to figure out seeing how the rotor just fell apart when i took the distributor off, it also left engravings of the rotor parth on the cap itself. Those are the only things i can think off.

when was the last time you changes you plug and wires?

 

Spark plugs were changed about 8 months ago NGK's, plug wires seemed fine so haven't changed them since I got the car over a year ago. Probably wouldn't be a bad idea to change those over anyway.

 

Spun rod bearing, found it in the oil pan when I removed it to inspect the lower end. Atleast I know what the problem is.....