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147 Sport Q2: top end rattle

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3K views 47 replies 9 participants last post by  halftone 
#1 ·
Recently bought cheap because of this fault. A few days until I collect the car, but am trying to plan how to deal with it.

On cold start there is a moderately loud rattle, which diminishes as the car warms up. Once hot, it is still there, but not very obvious - barely louder than normal diesel sounds. Tickover is smooth, not lumpy. No obvious loss of power.

The tapping noise at cold strongly resembles a too-wide tappet, or worn cam lobe. A metal bar (as stethoscope) localises the noise to the cam cover area between cylinders 3 and 4, and just forward of the centre line. I suspect a sticky hydraulic lifter and/or damaged rocker and/or cam lobe. But it's not that loud, so I am hoping just the lifter.

So far so obvious. But I also listened to the injectors, and 3 and 4 are making a lot of noise compared to 1 & 2. So they could be the origin. However that might just be sound conduction through the head. The tapping sound at the injectors is the same volume as listening directly to the head. The injectors have been professionally cleaned, although it's not clear when.

The seller says the noise began around 4,000 miles ago, and has got slowly worse. Also fuel consumption has got somewhat worse. So it could be noisy injectors pretending to be a tappet rattle. Does anyone know of a way to tell the difference?

Or it really could be a lifter. He is presently using Selenia 10w/30 instead of /40. There is no DPF so no real need for this. Possibly this thinner oil drains out of a lifter whilst stopped and doesn't pump up properly again.

Is there any diagnostic way to distinguish injector noise from lifter noise?
Are lifters a common issue with the CF4 16v? (~80k mls)
Is it worth running some Wynn's Hydraulic Lifter Treatment? And/or changing the fairly fresh 10w/30 for /40?
Just try the 3,000rpm cycle to pump up the lifters and clear airlocks routine, mentioned in the sticky?
What is the usual cause of sticky lifters? Lacquer causing stickiness? Debris blocking the lifter valves? Or just wear in the lifter or head?
Is cam or rocker damage a likely consequence, so a really bad idea to drive the car until resolved?

I'm planning to DIY but working outside at this time of year isn't fun. Swirl flap removal looks like a priority and investigating and fixing lifters will involve much of the same work (cambelt, etc). Quite a lot to do in the street, in December. What sort of price could I expect for swirl delete and replacement of lifters if needed, from an independent? I'd also like to delete the EGR and have it mapped out, but that cost will have to wait until next year.


Thanks for any advice.
 
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#2 · (Edited)
Try running the engine without your aux belt. The alternator clutch pulley can make sounds that make you think the worse and the noise is difficult to locate with a screw driver to your ear.
Leaking injector seals also give your car the sound of a dying tractor. Feel for a draught above the injectors and have a good smell for diesel fumes.
If you still suspect more serious damage up top unfortunately it's going to be expensive and not really easy this time of year diy if you're outside.
Expect big bills and consider walking away.
Consider not fixing it and driving it into the ground. Think of withnail's jaguar as your inspiration.
 
#4 ·
Thanks both

Thanks for the suggestions, which I will follow up. Injector test had struck me as worth doing.
Ladenhall Diesel Services | Bosch | Delphi | Denso | VDO | Stanadyne | Yanmar | Injectors | Pumps | Tests | Repairs | Rebuilds | Historic Units | Retail & Trade | London NW | Middx | UK | World Export | are not far away from me, if anyone has anything good or bad to say about them. Or better suggestions.

I looked for but couldn't find any suggestion of leaking injector seals. The noise does seem definitely localised to the top of cyl 3 & 4. But I'll want to check belts, pulleys etc anyway.

Walking away is far too sensible. Surely nobody would ever own an Alfa, with that approach :) It's a really nice car and lovely to drive with none of the traditional AR gremlins, and you could eat your dinner off the well-sealed underside. Nah, one way or another I'll fix it, even if it takes a while.
 
#7 ·
Useful to know, thanks. There seem to be many threads with 16v top end/apparent tappet noise, but almost all of them peter out without resolution. Either because there was no resolution or the OP didn't bother to come back and say what cured it.

I only found one AO thread where the resolution was given as replacement (of a single lifter! - he said it was hard to tell which it was). There also seem to be lots of people selling replacement lifter sets for Fiat/Vauxhall/Saab equivalent engines on eBay etc... and they're available through Alibaba in quantities of 1,000 +, made in China, which suggests a significant market. Whether those are chocolate counterfeits or the start of Fiat's supply chain I have no idea.
 
#8 ·
Interesting, I'm new to Alfas so I was fairly surprised at such a significant job being carried out on a diesel lump if I'm honest! I knew I wanted an Alfa diesel so it clinched the deal in buying my GT, as I knew that's not something I'd have to shell out on. I'll look up the bill when I get home (currently working away) and see if anything else coincided with the work. I know the bill was about £1200-£1500 - but a cambelt, waterpump and service were thrown in too.
 
#9 ·
I don't think hydraulic lifters are terribly reliable across all makes. Fords, PSA, VW's Mercs and BMW's all suffer as well. They're small precision parts under extreme stress, and susceptible to dirty oil. Personally I think modern 'long life' service intervals are far too long because although synthetic oils continue to work, combustion contaminants have nowhere to go. Add a bit of owner neglect and a gummed up valve in the lifter seems to be a common event. It's one situation where oil additives actually can work rather than being useless snake oil. It seems about 50% of the time stuff like Wynnes Hydraulic Lifter Treatment clears the problem, the other 50% it doesn't, probably because by then physical damage has been caused.

At this point I don't know that is the problem anyway. But I'm reasonably confident it's either a lifter or injector noise. Whatever it is quietens down considerably once warm, though never goes away completely, and doesn't affect the running noticeably. I'll update this thread as I find out more.
 
G
#11 ·
I have exactly the rattle outlined in the OP, and at the same times, under the same conditions.

I bought my car at 40K miles, on a warm early October day. No hint of noise on start-up or while running. A few weeks later when the weather turned colder, I started noticing the rattle. I wondered whether it was a heatshield issue (had exactly the same type of noise with my old TS 156). But apparently not.

The noise completely disappears when the engine is fully warmed up, and doesn't really show itself at all during warm summer months. When the weather turns colder, it's there again, on start-up. I've mentioned it to both (very good) independent garages I use for servicing but of course by the time I've got to them the car's warmed up!

The car runs just fine, and I've now completed 30K miles with the car (now totalling 70K miles). It's never got any worse. AFAIK the previous owner was just as fastidious about servicing as I. But he'd only had it from around 25K IIRC.
 
#12 ·
Well. Because it's easy and cheap I decided I'd chuck a £5 bottle of Wynne's Hydraulic Lifter Treatment into the oil. I have to say I have zero faith in oil additives. Years ago I worked regularly with Bike magazine and we had a whole bunch of them lab tested, and none came out with a clean bill of health, varying between snake oil and sulphuric acid. Whatever tiny additional protection they gave was usually at the cost of much greater corrosion etc, and especially no good for bearing shells. But this Wynne's stuff has quite a lot of positive feedback and is supposedly just detergents - a less aggressive form of flush.

Within a mile the tapping was much quieter! By the time I got home (4mls) I had to listen quite hard to identify it at all. Not only that, the entire top end is significantly quieter and smoother sounding, and I hadn't even realised it was rattly. The single noisy tappet is still there, but it no longer sounds alarmingly louder than the rest, just a little distinct from the healthy background rattle. The sharpness of the noise has reduced. It's much less and sounds dampened, presumably by better oil flow.

I am not calling it fixed, but this does rather confirm what I thought: gum and sludge was preventing the tappet from working properly.

So far (only 4mls) that Wynnes stuff gets about 7/10 from me.

I'll run it like this for a while to see whether there's any further improvement, then use a flushing additive and change the oil and filter. Possibly it having been run like this for a few thousand miles will have worn at least the tappet and it will need to be changed, but I'm not going to be doing a lot of miles over the winter. If it stays like this or better, that can all wait for warmer weather.

Now it's a bit quieter, I can hear other stuff to be paranoid about as I get to know the car. I'll post some more questions in new threads.
 
G
#14 ·
Thanks Halftone, yes, keep us posted. I'll check out the stuff next time I'm near Halfrauds.

Sadly, I've just had this year's service, so possibly not a good idea for me to put stuff in now, and for it to be in for a whole year?
 
#16 ·
There's no info re the lifter treatment stuff that says it's bad to leave it in the engine, or that you should change the oil.

The oil in my car is fairly new, but from the partial history I suspect its second owner wasn't very conscientious about oil changes. Synthetic oils are amazing, they maintain film strength almost indefinitely and at much higher temps than mineral oils. But there's not much they can do about the burden of carbon, ash, acids and water from combustion, and - aside from making a nice corrosive grinding paste - that crap settles and solidifies and gums up oilways etc. Changing oil was necessary with mineral oils mainly because the oil was worn out and you'd get metal-to-metal wear if you didn't. With synthetics, the oil carries on lubricating, it's mainly to get rid of the contaminants.

So I intend using some diesel flush and changing the oil not to get rid of the Wynnes lifter treatment, but to get rid of accumulated sludge and gum that probably caused the problem in the first place.

Running up thousands of miles with a lifter hammering away badly is likely to wear the lifter so replacement is then the only option. There is also the possibility of rocker damage and/or cam wear. If gum is your problem and the Wynnes stuff does clear it, then the sooner the better - you may dodge a large, costly overhaul. The jury is still out on whether I have, I've not used the car since 4mls made a big but not total difference.
 
#15 ·
I've used the wynnes stuff twice, once on an old Corsa 1.4 8valve, this worked wonders, completely solved my problems as once it had cleared the gunge from the valve, even after oil changes, it still remained quiet. The other was a Calibra 16valve, this didn't work and I ended up replacing all the lifters at great cost (me doing the work), problem was when I replaced all of them, I still couldn't see which one was at fault. It was that though and worked. I think when we were all using think mineral gravy for oil, this really had some effect as it looks not far from water, but with todays synthetic oils being so watery, this probably doesn't have as good effect.
 
#17 ·
have heard good things about that stuff from several sources, certainly worth a punt for the money..

also apparently it does its best work after a good run so your 4 miles is probably just starting to get it through, I think you will see further improvements.


I have a mate with the saab 1.9 tdi (same engine) and he used this stuff, after a coupe of hundred miles it was sorted and a bit later the oil was dropped and replaced with 5/40 fully synth ,the problem has not returned. and its been 10,000 miles and 6 months.

:thumbup:
 
#18 ·
Fingers crossed :) I want to give the car a thorough look over before I do any distance, just haven't had the time during dry daylight yet.

This has sensitised me to lifter noise. I now notice that half the diesel cars I hear in the street have at least one noisy lifter as bad as mine now is. Yesterday's champion was a 3yr-old Audi. Lots of VAG, PAS and Fords sound like a rattler can, as well as Vauxhalls etc with this Fiat engine. There is an epidemic :)
 
#19 ·
100mls on and the Wynnes has changed things, but not cured them. Before adding the Wynnes it seemed to be noisiest on cold starts, then got less noisy with the engine warmed up. This was pretty consistent, but not totally - when I collected the car for 15 sec there was no rattle at all.

Since adding the Wynnes it's now highly inconsistent, and comes and goes. Yesterday I hoped a run would improve matters, and some of the time it was almost inaudible, at others it was as bad as ever. It was pretty quiet when I arrived at my sons 50mls away. He runs a Golf TDi and asked to drive the 147 (and was massively impressed). But I could hear the rattle as he drove off, and could still hear it when he was 200m away. Five minutes later it had almost gone again.

Last night I found a video on Youtube, of a 159 with pretty much identical noise, although his single 'loose tappet' noise is less prominent than mine at its worst. Listen at 50secs in, at https://youtu.be/rt0KxY8lLxs

As with mine, the noise appears localised on the cambox just inboard of the vacuum pump. Quite a few comments say 'mine does that too'. The OP posted (in Polish) a conclusion: "I think that the sound comes from the injectors but because the adjustments are perfect, there are no problems with the car that I gave up. Ps: I was also in a number of specialists asking about the sound of the engine and we all agree that it is OK."

This is all very puzzling. At its quietest I could accept it's just a rattly engine, but at its loudest it doesn't sound healthy or normal at all. All I can think is that a lifter is exposing worn and not so worn aspects to the cam as the lifter rotates, or that there's a partly blocked oilway so it doesn't pump up consistently. I can't see how injector noise would come and go, at idle, irrespective of temperature - but maybe I'm missing something? The Wynnes has made a difference, which might strengthen the sludge/gum/oilway theory, but it's so inconsistent it doesn't look like being a cure.
 
#20 ·
If you are thinking its the tappets, I would do an oil change (unless you've already just done it)? and add another bottle of the wynnes(only if your changing the oil!) - giving the engine the best chance of flushing through the crud if there is any there. Its obviously working and keep in mind, when mine worked on the Corsa, it wasn't an over night fix, it took a while for the tappets to go quiet completely. Persevere with it, hopefully you'll have a cheap fix.
 
#22 ·
The oil is pretty fresh Selenia 10w30, changed 2,000mls ago. Yes, I'll let it run with Wynnes for a while yet. It does seem to have done something in that it isn't rattling when cold, which was when it was loudest previously. When hot, which is when it was quietest, the rattle returns at times, then goes again. I'll give it a while yet, then try a more aggressive flush and change the oil in a month or two.
 
#24 ·
Yes, you're right it should really be 5w/40 and that perhaps would be a little quieter, but what's in there is what's recommended on the same engine with DPF in the 159 etc. I don't think it's an issue, I think gum and sludge are. That it goes quiet at times is perhaps confirmation. On the other hand it might indicate a worn lifter than changes clearance as it rotates.

So I still think it is gum/sludge most likely, and I suspect from the partial history that the car may have suffered from an early owner who thought an already ambitious 12,000mls change interval could be stretched to 20,000. Synthetics are so robust it probably still worked fine as a lubricant, but full of crap with nowhere to go.

Still, it could be a really loud injector or a metal swirl flap rattling before breaking off completely (please, no). It could even be an aux belt wheel, I need to check that - but I doubt the sound would appear to come from top nearside of the head.Whatever it is, it seems to be quite common, and in the same apparent location as the Youtube video I mentioned upthread, with quite a lot of people saying "mine does that too". And it doesn't affect the running at any revs, it runs really well.
 
#25 ·
Thats the trouble with buyng a used car, you can oten never be sure how it has been maintained. My car was really well cared for in that the interior and paintwrk etc was like new. Looking at the service hiistory though it got basic servicing only. Cheap oil at intervals I would not use (but within the service guidelines), cheap brakes etc. Not abuse, but just standard practice for someone who does not really know anything about preventative maintenance.
re the injectors, many on here have reported good resuts with some 2 stroke oil. I have used it myself and it does apppear to quieten them down a bit (but this is a subjective view only). I have also seen reports where some paraffin is also used with the 2 stroke oil as a cleaner (have heard it argued that this is commonly a major component in commercially availalble fuel system cleaners) but I would advise that you do your own research before trying that.
 
#26 ·
There is some injector cleaner in the tank, and posh Shell Ultra, since I filled the car at the weekend. The previous owner had the injectors professionally cleaned. No documentary proof but I believe him. I do however wonder if they got swapped around and/or need re-coding, another thing to check.
 
#27 ·
I just spent an hour checking over this car, and it seems I had several 'rattles' rather than just one. Listening to the head now, things are much quieter hot or cold. There's really no lifter clatter now (perhaps due to the Wynnes), and the 2 noisy injectors are now quieter too. In fact there's only one that's still at all noisy, and that's just a bit sharp. I've had injector cleaner + Shell Ultra in the tank for 50mls, so hopefully that explains the change, and may improve further.

Trouble is, I think the car had been fooling me. The quieter top end has exposed the dominant rattle, which appears to be low in the belt area. It's far louder in the offside wheel arch than anywhere else. It's worst on tickover but comes and goes somewhat. Rev the engine a little and it reduces but is still there. It's a metal-on-metal impact sound. I could almost imagine it's a big end, but it doesn't have the 'weight', nor does it get worse on overrun. Oil pressure seems fine too. The aux belt looks good and runs true with no sign of abraded edges. I will jack the car and pull the wheel and liner off tomorrow and try it briefly without the aux belt. I suspect the crank pulley may be the culprit. But is it even possible that it could really make that much noise?
 
#28 ·
I suspect the crank pulley may be the culprit. But is it even possible that it could really make that much noise?
Yes. Had crank pulley go on my Bravo diesel. Had not seen it before this and I thought that it was terminal for the engine as it was that sort of noise that usually spells bad news. Apart from the noise the pulley caused the aux belt to be shredded along its edge so check ythe aux belt carefully for damage.
 
#30 · (Edited)
I'd say yes, the crank pulley is probably the source of the heavy rattle, but today it was quieter than yesterday. It does come and go. The rubber is cracked and aged. And with the wing liner out I can hear other noises from the belt, a bit of a fluttering chirrup noise on the overrun. Not convinced it isn't an idler, or the tensioner, or alternator, or aircon pump - or all of them!

Obviously I need to take the belt off and check each in turn. But I am now baffled by how to get to them. From various other threads, I thought I'd have access once I'd removed the wing liner - but no, I am just staring at the steel of the inner wing. The only bit of the aux belt drivetrain I can see is the crank pulley. I can't even see the tensioner let alone back it off to remove the belt.

From the top there is no room at all without removing the ECU and stabiliser strut and engine mount. From underneath looks like it might be more accessible if I take the undertray off. But ugh as I am doing this in the gutter.

Can anyone point me to a procedure for the 147 1.9 JTDM 16v, please? And what sort of bit do I need for the 4 pulley bolts? [edit: (Ribe, yes, but what size?)] Answer : M8 Ribe, allegedly.
 
#31 ·
OK, it seems it's only really do-able from underneath with spidery arms and X-ray vision, and I can't jack this car high enough. And I'm old, and it's cold (or will be, after Xmas). So I'm probably going to wuss out and ask a specialist to do it for me. If anyone is still reading or similarly afflicted, here are a couple of videos of the remaining rattle:
https://youtu.be/qH1GsO9kJ14 - from the top, hard to localise now the lifters and injectors are all the same
https://youtu.be/zcSmfYthrqk - at the crank pulley, arch liner off.
 
#32 ·
If the noise is worse at idle but improves/disappears with a few more revs then it could be the alternator free-wheeling pulley. Makes a clanky, rattly sort of noise at idle when it's seized up. Easy to check once the Aux belt is off simply by jamming the alternator rotor with a screwdriver whilst trying to turn the pulley by hand. Pulley should lock up in the normal direction of rotation but turn relatively easily in the opposite direction. If it does anything else it's broken.
 
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