Not my car, but I'm not familiar with that noise... rod knock? Thought rod knock would be deeper. Notice how the noise changes with throttle/no throttle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FX6hrCXExk

Ouch!!! I thought Murph, the $500 87 T-Wag sounded bad :-(

 

(just TOD for me)

mine makes a similar noise at startup when cold for about 30sec. or so. not QUITE as loud though. also makes a similar noise between 2500-3000rpm. it's been doing that since i bought it, but my mechanic said not to worry. i've put about 40000 mi on her since.

I would think a rod would be a lower sound like you say.

Could just be a really bad rod though. :-\

 

Kinda sounds like my GL. Only mines lower sounding and goes away after several seconds once it has oil pressure.

From what I have read of the experience of others, EA series rods tend to knock for a very short time, then jump out of the block. It sounds very much like lifter noise.. very BAD lifter noise, but its gonna get loud if one is totally collapsed and you have to rev the engine to keep it running. If you have to do the headgaskets anyway, then you ought to tear the heads off and see.. for all you know, you could have run with it like this for too long and possibly damaged the rocker arm.

 

However, its not easy to just say "TOD" when you can't fish your ear around the engine bay and listen for a source yourself. Try getting a bigass screwdriver, sticking the base of the handle against your ear, and touching the tip to the engine in various places while its running to see if you can localize the noise.. if it is coming from the head I would say 90% chance of lifter noise, possibly all the lfiters on a side from a sucked in cam carrier o-ring.. 85 model? thats before they switched to metal-reinforced...

 

Don't get discouraged yet

I ended up having my engine replaced because of a serious sounding knock. From the vid noise, mine was lower pitched. My assumption and the advice of service techs led me to think it was a rod or wrist pin and it turned out to be the timing belt tensioner bearing. Investigate all avenues.

If it is a rod knock, then it can be isolated by pulling one spark plug wire at a time when the engine is running.

it sounds to me like lifter noise, allbeit very loud lifter noise. Rod nock is deeper, and it would be fairly fast, Remember cams spin at half the speed the crank does. I wasnt in your garage so I cant really tell you what to expect exactly, hows the oil look? and whats the pressure, that would be a start.

I'm gonna say very, very loud valve noise. Either that or a cracked piston skirt(an outside possibility) Doesn't have that deep rod knock sound to me. And the fact it seemed so hard to start could be from vavles not opening all the way(collapsed lifter)

 

Pull the heads off and give her a looking over. May even want to pull the wrist pins and pop out the pistons for inspection. Espescially if you don't find any obvious problem in the heads.

Actually it's not even my car, just ran across it on youtube and sounded like the guy didn't know what it was... and I thought valve noise too, so I posted the vid here to see what you guys thought. I posted a response to the vid for him and said it really didn't sound like rod knock.