When my car sits at idle for an extended period of time, I also get the normal tick....
I haven't investigated yet, but it sounds almost like a Rod Knock...Defiently SOUNDS like it's coming from the lower end... Experienced ones here will know what I mean....
Anyway's 00 Max, 59,xxx miles..Plenty of oil...Seem's to be plenty of oil pressure while driving, only does it at idle...
Is this a common problem? Is it unheard of? Or am I just being to dam picky??

 

I swear our 3.5l has an occasional rod-knock, sounds horrible, you can even hear it under a light load going slow, and if you slowly rev the motor up in nuetral it REALLY sounds like a rod knock, it only does it during certain times though, I'm going to give it some extended idling and see if that gets it to re-occur, because it's not their all the time, and I know for a fact I'm NOT imagining it or being to picky. I would have brought it in long ago except it isn't an everyday thing, and it probably wouldn't do it for the dealer. I need to be able to get it to do it all the time. I'm going to do some 'extended idling' tonight, thanks.

 

Are you sure it's not VTC?

 

Never heard of ANYONE spining a rod bearing in a VQ30, unless ofcourse its been abused and oil hasn't been changed... but then again I never heard of it. Its not like a SR20 that spins rod bearings quite often.

It might be your timing chain tenssioner bad that is causing a rattle. I personally have the rattle when starting the car up. I also have 140K miles on mine with oil changes done exacly every 3K miles or 1 month- in my case, with Mobil 1 Synthetic. My engine looks LIKE new inside, as I had to repleace my oil pan due to a stripped out drain plug- I kinda poked around inside to see how she looks. I ainticipate another 200K out of her with no problems.

 

Guess I should have worded that differently....I get the normal tick, and also what sounds like a rod knock.....
If spinning a bearing is unheard of, then I'm not to concerned with it...Thanks for the help...

 

Well when the bearing spins it digs into the crankshaft journal and things usually go downhill very quickly, plus nissan lower-ends are BULLETPROOF! Maybe mine is the vtc, I don't want to hi-jack this thread though, I'm just going to wait it out.

You should buy an oil-pressure gauge or briing it to a trust-worthy shop and have the oil-pressure checked, a compression test might also be useful. Low oil pressure would usually show up first as a valve train tick and could eventually get worse and then the bearings wouldn't get good pressure either, causing a knock.