November 7, 200619 yr I was accelerating on the highway this morning at 3am to get to my newspaper rack route and something broke It lost some power and started making a "tinking" noise, that rose and dropped with engine rpm, although it sounded loose so that when decelerating the noise was not an even beat.... I pulled over and oil looked good, and I wasnt leaking anything yet. The noise sounded like a hammer hitting metal when idling: tank...tank...tank...tank I didnt have much option to keep going, so I drove from longmont to boulder at 55mph (about 15 miles?) and ran the car on a delivery route for about 2 hours...and it still runs. No smoke... but it is very noisy with all the bashing around and idles poorly, but will rev fairly smoothly, although with the noise I didnt let it go above 3500 rpm. My guess is something in the valvetrain, any opinions? I am honestly just happy it didnt strand me.
November 7, 200619 yr Wait.... you have an EA81 in an 87 wagon? You *sure* this isn't an EA82? EA82's have timing belts.... GD
November 7, 200619 yr Author Positive, I bought the car with a locked up ea-82 and swapped the ea81 into it
November 7, 200619 yr Ok - in that case it sounds a lot like you snapped a rod. The metal hammering on metal, the loss of power, and the very rough idle.... sounds like a rod broke but didn't smash through the block like they usually do. Test each cylinder for compression. Drain the oil and see how many bits and peices you get out of it. Maybe you bent a push-rod, but that wouldn't really explain the continuous knocking. GD
November 7, 200619 yr Author oh, that really sucks... if it is a broken rod it looks like Roo may become a parts car already replaced one engine, not sure I have the time or drive to put another one in
November 7, 200619 yr There's really not much on the EA81 that can make that knocking noise other than a tossed rod - do a comp. check first thing. Harbor Frieght has comp. guages for like $10 if you need one. Or even pull the plugs, and use a drinking straw to verify that all the pistons are even moving..... GD
November 7, 200619 yr Author Ok, Thanks for the suggestions/info... I am likely going to try to drive it the 20 miles back home tonight. I probably won't have time to check it out much but I will post in the AM what happens.
November 8, 200619 yr Author Well, it is dead now.. made it about half the way home and the noise got louder all of a sudden then blew the rest of the way, trailing smoke and smelling of antifreze. How frustrating to replace an engine to only get 10,000 miles out of the replacement Anyway looks like you were right GD... seems like a broken rod to me, and the engine is now frozen.
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