I'll make this short. I turned on the car after leaving my friends house and there was a sick amount of knocking inside the engine. I opened the hood and could hear a distinct rattling, probably with one of the pistons but it sounded like there was something metal inside rattling around.

Can pistons just fall apart like that?


After trying to drive home, the car warmed up and it resumed with its usual ticking.

 

Check the oil level

 

Will do. Just had it changed about a month ago though.

 

Use the tip of a long screwdriver and touch the engine block and put the other end to your ear to hear if it is indeed coming from inside the engine. If you feel adventurous, just drain the oil and drop the oil pan to take a peek.

 

sounds like its a piece of metal on top of the piston...kinda like its bouncing around. Car turned off too, headlight started to flicker and it struggled to shut off as the rattling continued.

But then again i dont know how the inside of our engine looks like so im only assuming by ear and from what friends told me.

 

Does the rattleing go away as you rev up the motor ?? mileage on the motor ??

Check the oil level and consitancy of the oil as well

Any way you can get a Vid of it ?

 

are you sure it's internal and not some portion of the engine body that is a little loose? You did have that IM fiasco a while back, maybe something loosened up

 

Turned it on today and the symptoms went away.

I also video taped it but the sound is terrible, no use.

Only thing i can think of is the engine was REALLY cold, due to the weather last night in Los angeles, and the oil wasnt circulating...?

 

It's very likely that it was a huge chunk of carbon stuck in a cylinder. It happens alot when the kid takes moms car out for a joy-ride and drives it hard, then the next day dad accuses the kid of blowing up moms car last night! the fix is really easy on older cars that don't have a maf you just slowly pour a little bit of water into the intake while revving the engine up, it works every time, to much water and you'll hydrolock the motor though, on newer cars it's tricky because you have to remove the maf since it glows red hot and will potentially burn out if water hits it. on a side note, if something like that ever happens again checking the oil level right away instead of trying to drive home is a must. I once put a built mustang motor in a freinds car that we had taken out of another freinds car, the thing ran mint in the last car but once we started it up it knocked SOOO BAD! I tested the oil pressure, found it was ZERO, jacked up the engine and pulled the pan, found the oil pump was junk, replaced it in the car and it was good to go for another 30k, but if we had drove it like that.......

 

some engine knocking also comes from bad or low octane fuel. try using higher octane gas and see what happends.

 

Thats more of a pinging when under med to heavy load. ie up a slight incline, ex. Starting your car, the ecu dumps soo much gas, the octane does not mean a thing

 

You're confusing rod knock and spark knock.

 

Are you serious?



as for the sound, imagine that little ball inside a spray-paint can inside your engine bouncing around. But the sound is gone for now, ill report if anything new happens.

Thanks

 

yes I'm completely serious, I saw one of my shop teachers fix a minivan that he bought for a few hundred with a couple drops of water! "blown motor" my ****, there is stuff commercially available sold for that purpose but water works just as good, it's amazing the amount of crap that blows out of the tailpipe when you rev it up. I saw it work one other time for 'fixing a rod knock' on some gay muscle car that had only 10k on the motor, the guy put 89 in it and swore he messed the motor up because of it when in actuallity the lower octane fuel raised the combustion temps enough to break off a huge peice of carbon, it's not a common thing to happen but it does happen every now and then and thats the fix for it, go ask any good mechanic about that one. Anyways, from reading some of your posts though I think you dropped a bolt down the intake awhile back anyways............nah I'm kidding, well maybe not, that would suck, did you wver do your waterpump yet? it might not be a bad idea to pop on a new tensioner when you do that......