Rattly engine
 

My MY98, bless it, is getting a bit long in the tooth with 71k miles - and it seems that the engine note gets very rattly at between 3k - 5k revs.

This seems louder than it used to be, and I wondered what it meant was wearing out (in addition to the fact it's a bit old).

Sounds kinda dieselly, if you know what I mean.

As always, any thoughts welcomed!

dont sound good! mine went that way before pop! well bottom end fell out kinda! turned out to be 1 shell knackered! doh now why did i buy a P1 engine instead!

Prob. piston slap m8! Common on MY98 cars.

Ah, yes, good ol' piston slap - yes, it has that, but normally when it's freshly cold-started in the colder months, and it goes when warmed up, as you'd expect.

This is more of a hot-running thing - i.e. it still does it some hours into a motorway drive..

Does it sound very metal like ?

Maybe conrod bearings ? But driving with the sound that this makes you'd 've probalby not driven it anymore.

Good luck whatever it may be.

"My MY98, bless it, is getting a bit long in the tooth with 71k miles "
My missus has a 98 Turbo 2000 which has done just over 165k - still on original engine - had no probs at all - serviced every 7k...
Drives like the day it did when we bought it from the showroom with 6 miles on it :)

Conrods - again, sadly, I can say "been there, done that" and no, it's not the rather terrifyingly loud clattering of important pieces of engine floating about freely in the cylinder.

I guess I'll just put it down to being old.

And STi-V4 - thanks for the, er, "advice" ;) You lucky bugger!

Sure it's not a fractured up- pipe or a cracked turbo heat shield?? It could be piston slap which will eventually be there all the time rather than when cold only. as it deteriorates. Try a better grade of oil, say 15W50 or similar and see what happens. You will get oil consumption with piston slap, can't have one without the other - how's the consumption ??

If it were more serious, it would collapse in seconds, when a big end fails at say, 4000 rpm, the crank is rotating at 66 times a second. It doesn't take long for internal mayhem to break loose. Just think of a F1 engine doing 19,000 rpm [316 per sec] !!!

David APi Engines / APi Impreza

My oil consumption went from full to dry as a bone before i knew what hit me when by short engine needed replacing. Darn oil level light was deffo not working unless it works on smell. Cos it was dry as a bone fried on a barbecue :)

Could just be rattly heat shields - should be cheap to fix if so