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Engine rattle noise, should I be worried?

Waqasr

New member
Location
London, UK
So ive done some reading guys but not sure if this is the chain tensioner issue or not.

It makes this noise intermittently so it isnt always there, but more often than not it is. Its there at idle but seems to lessen when actually on the move but theres still a whining sound when moving.

It seems like its coming more from the front of the engine?

In second video you can hear in the first 8 seconds its fine then the noise comes in at 9 seconds.

https://youtu.be/513ttcIJgzI

https://youtu.be/xI05kiN_DtM
 

vwengineer

Ready to race!
Location
Switzerland
Strange noise indeed :/ the chain and it's tensioner is on the other side of the engine. You are looking at the timing belt cover there
 

GTI's

Drag Racing Champion
Location
MD
Take off the access cover on upper timing belt cover and check if the noise gets louder or more pronounced, could also use a mechanics stethoscope. May want to remove accessory drive belt to remove some of the noise in that area, just remember to replace it in the same direction of the original rotation.
 

vwengineer

Ready to race!
Location
Switzerland
So as I said before, I had a rattle noise for 1-2s when starting the engine following my oil change (Unknown, non-LL 5W-30 to Fuchs LL 5W-30 ACEA C3). Now that temperatures are low, it does not make it anymore, so I assumed it to come from the chain tensioner (maybe it lost tension when engine was not running due to the oil being low viscosity?).

Now I resealed the vacuum pump and as I had everything open and also had a small endoscope camera, I thought I would have a look at the tensioner and chain, just by curiosity. So here we go:


First of all and conversely to what I thought, I have the B revision intake cam which is good:



Now it seems like the tensioner has to take quite a bit of slack in the chain (especially since there is no oil pressure, it is maybe not fully extended, chain made no noise when restarting after though):




Looking at a replacement tutorial picture, mine is around 50% deployed:



What do you think looking at these pictures? My chain/tensioner has only 52k miles, seems a bit too early to fail (first one broke after 150k miles). Did you have the chance to look at yours?
 
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