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YACT: I think my friend's Grand Am may be FUBAR'd.

H

Heisenberg

Lifer
A friend of mine has a 96 Grand Am with the 3.1L V6. It was fine when he drove it home from work Friday. Saturday when he started it he said it wasn't running right so I went and looked at it. The motor is making a loud metallic clicking or pinging noise. There's also a smell of raw gas. Otherwise, the motor was running pretty smoothly, idling normally at around 800 rpm. I'm almost certain the noise is from the motor itself, although it was dark and cold and they cram stuff pretty tight in there to begin with, so I'm not 100% sure. I told him not to drive the car and call someone first thing Monday morning. I've never heard a motor make that specific noise before but I'm thinking maybe something in the valvetrain is bad. Any ideas?
 
A collapsed lifter will make a loud clicking noise.

A bad connecting rod bearing will make a loud banging noise.

A bad crankshaft bearing will make a loud thumping noise.

None of the above will produce an odor of gasoline.
 
incorrect valve lash will do this (the noise at least). in a modern car, you'll want to get that taken care immediately. the old VW motors used to do this when they needed their valves adjusted (which was like every 3000 miles
rolleye.gif
) but when you heard the sound it just meant it was time for a tuneup. in a modern car, by the time you hear it tapping, the car is already hurting itself.
 
Is it almost like it's ticking or tapping? My father had a chevy corsica with 3.1 liter V6 (I assume it's the same engine or similar since they're both GM companies) and it had this sort of ticking sound. The mechanic said just let it run, it wasn't going to fail catastrophically and on that car it wasn't worth fixing. So we just let it go... 3 years later it still taps like crazy but runs just as well as it used to.
 
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