Tappets ??

[rossmorrison]

I have recently bought a 997Carrera S . 06 . 79,000. FPSH . Well looked after car. Everything is good apart from a ticking , Tapping noise coming from the engine when shes cold . After 5-10 mins its gone. I was mighty concerned about the dreaded bore scoring but no oil is being burnt. No smoke at all. Could it be a sticky hydraulic tappet ? If so, is this common ? Car goes really well with no issues apart from this annoying tapping.

Any thoughts ?

 

[chips]

Hi,
Early symptoms to bore scoring on 997.1 S models is a tapping sound (bank 2) at idle and blacken exhaust tips on nearside of the car. You will need to have a bore scope inspection to confirm this. Have a look at Hartech website, they have good documentation on this symptom and other issues.
You said there is a ticking sound at startup and disappears after a few minutes, this could be lack of oil to the hydraulic valve lifters. If the car is left parked over long periods of time (week or more) the oil drains away from the valve lifters and will cause ticking sound when it starts until oil circulates and reach the valve lifters.

 

[rossmorrison]

If it was the dreaded bore scoring would the tapping go away when the car was warm ? Would it not continue? There does n`t appear to be any blackening at the exhaust. I gave both sides a thorough clean and they both are the same with no undue blackening.

 

[Rodney Naghar]

Chips' second paragraph applies to you. It's a common problem, I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[Motorhead]

Ross,

As has been noted many times on these and other forums it's quite normal for the flat-6 engines to sound 'tappety' on start-up, which normally disappears once the engine is up to temperature. Mind you, it can be quite variable: sometimes my Cayman is relatively quiet on start-up but sounds like a bag of nails after a decent run; so who knows?

The problem with the boxer engine is that a lot of the sound radiated from the blocks/heads is reflected unattenuated off the ground and out the sides of the car. This is unlike a conventional vertical in-line or vee engine which is encased by the engine bay where sound attenuating materials can reduce the amount of sound escaping.

Don't worry about it and just enjoy the car.

Jeff

 

[DrSimon]

My car had been parked up for two months over the winter (I'm optimistic we're now in spring!) and I started it last week. It sounded like a sack of nails for the first five minutes but then once warmed up all was well. This sounds like nothing to worry about, especially if the noise disappeared over time and there's no blackening on the nearside exhaust.