leggate

in the past few days a tapping sound has been getting worse on my 99 impreza turbo. it seems to be coming from the low end of the engine on the near side below the turbo area. the car has done 113k miles and im suspecting its a tappet. just wondering what someone else thinks and should i be worried

cheers

dave

Splitpin

Welcome. Your car doesn't actually have any tappets, so the one thing that's certain at the moment is that this isn't the cause of the noise.

If you're sure the tapping is coming from the camshaft/head area of the engine, it might be that the valve clearances have gone out of spec but unfortunately that isn't particularly likely, even on an engine with over 100,000 on it, at least not to the point of being easily audible.

It's notoriously difficult to diagnose "noises" over the web so unfortunately we can't tell you whether you should be worried or not. It might be that you have a bearing failure within the engine, or it might be as simple as a broken heatshield.

As things stand the most important thing is to get the car properly looked at by someone who knows what they're doing, and as soon as possible. If there is something up with the engine, the quicker it's diagnosed, and the less it's driven in the meantime, the smaller the eventual bill is likely to be.