Worrying noise

[Lloyd]

I think it's your aux belts. Real easy to test. Just chuck some water on the belts at the front when the car is ticking over. If the noise stops, you have no problem. It will of course come back soon after the water has gone.

A permanent fix is to renew (or maybe adjust) your aux belts.

I have no idea why they eventually make this rather metallic ticking noise, but they do.

I bet that's what your are hearing.

[pixsaudisex2]

I think it's your aux belts. Real easy to test. Just chuck some water on the belts at the front when the car is ticking over. If the noise stops, you have no problem. It will of course come back soon after the water has gone.

A permanent fix is to renew (or maybe adjust) your aux belts.

I have no idea why they eventually make this rather metallic ticking noise, but they do.

I bet that's what your are hearing.

I agree change or your aux belts...

Took me ages to work this one out new chain on cams new tappets and it was the belts..
How i do not know.. sounds like metal but im think the belts must be that hard they might as well be..

[Jack4688]

Thanks, I'll try wetting my belts first. If it is an oil pressure issue what should my gauge be reading during idle/normal/hard running?

[Vorsprung durch Technik]

Oil gets thinner the hotter it gets! So normal hot temperature idle pressure should be about 2 bar slightly less in high summer is no cause for concern as long as you have around 4.5-5 bar for motorway speeds. I was taught a trick years ago...put a tiny amount of vaseline on both faces of the alternator belt and it quitens it down completely.

[220bhp]

As far as the noise coming from the head, and not the bottom end is because ,Sound travels up the conrod and appears to come from the head. That's why we where focused on the tappets. The noise came from the piston reaching tdc then traveling the extra mm or so ,then dropping back another mm or so before the compression stroke.
We found this out by turning the engine over on the starter when the head was of.
Not saying its your problem, but it turned out to be mine.

[90/90qs]

I'll toss a loose cam chain into the hat

[macspring]

Not quite fully off topic, but are our engine prone to having blocked oil pick ups mesh in the sumps, that the 1.8T suffers from ?

Assuming reasonable maintenance rather than obvious neglect.

Once answered, back on topic.

Hopfully it is an inexpensive belt issue.

[zefsider]

you could do a lot worse than give it an oil change after a flush, Forte is the one to use, ...always seems to quieten down things for me

[Jack4688]

Well it isn't the belts

[Cottis]

Hmmm, not good. Who won the guessing game then. Good luck with it and hope it isn't too much of a headache/cost

[Jack4688]

I'll take it to FAR servicing tomorrow after work and see when I can get them to look at it. But unfortunately for me my boss is off for another week and I can't take time off at the same time as him - so that's about another 10 days of old man driving...

[Lloyd]

Well it isn't the belts

Sorry to hear that

[Error404]

Just sounds like noisy tappets to me, I wouldn't be too worried about it if you have good oil pressure i.e. 2 bar hot idle, 5 bar with some revs.
What oil are you running?

[Jack4688]

Yeah that's exactly what pressure I'm getting. I don't know what oil was used at the last service, I've got a bottle of something sitting in the garage for top ups but I've never needed it!

[Error404]

Hmmm, I'd suspect its cheap crap from the local factors. I'd drain it down & fill with some decent synthetic and nice new OEM filter