Quote:
Originally Posted by David R. Smith
Don't feel too bad, my dad was ready to rebuild the engine in his Willys Jeep because of the racket it was making. It turned out to be a timing gear bolt had backed out and was hitting the timing cover as the engine ran. The noise sounded just like a bad rod bearing and woould go away when you lifted off the gas, my dad kept telling me to quit wasting my time, the motor was shot. Well guess what? That was 8 or nine years ago, and the old Jeep is still running.
The clunking issue is an intrigue. A bad starter bendix maybe?
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See above for the intro -- I found it by unhooking all the belts. I was thinking that the other wild card in this drama was the water pump I'd put in. It's SOP to do the pump and the timing belt at the same time as the pump is covered up by a lot of stuff that has to come off for the belt replacement.
So I started it up and the racket was worse. The same noise but no longer random. I carefully reached down and rotated the pulley that mounts to the front of the water pump flange and the noise stopped! Eureka! The pulley was a tad out of round and it would hit one spot on the vibration damper which spins about 1/16th away, under normal circumstances. That explains the random nature of it, as they're different diameters so the point of contact came around in a semi random way -- had a pattern but a weird one.