Hey guys, I got an issue with my RL. On cold starts in the morning, it makes a clattering/knocking noise. It stops after a minute or two and I only hear this when the car has sat overnight. Between going to school and work I start it up multiple times during the day after its been sitting for 6-8+ hours and its fine, I don't understand. Other than this, the car runs good and has no check engine light.

Also, don't know if this is related but I was standing outside of the car tonight while it was idling and thought I saw a puff of smoke coming from the passenger side headlight area, opened the hood and I smelt oil on the side of the motor where the drive/timing belt is. The only thing I've found that I think it could actually be is the timing belt tensioner, but with only 75k miles I would think its premature for that part to wear out, but I may be wrong.

Anyways I was curious what you guys think? Here's the video, thanks for any help.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yhhm7FMuJrU&feature=youtu.be

 

The video is showing as unavailable, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say low oil pressure? Does it sound like valve noise? How old is the oil pump and timing belt?

 

This should work, I had the first one set to private for some reason.

I'm not sure if the noise is like a metal on metal sound that would indicate low oil pressure and definitely is louder than valve noise. I haven't done anything but regular maintenance to the car and with the mileage it has, I assume the timing belt and oil pump are original.

 

Scratch my oil pressure theory, that's not what that sounds like at all... Anyone else hearing this as an exhaust leak? Does the noise go up drastically with throttle?

 

Yes it does increase with RPM. Today the weather was warmer and it started up fine this morning, no noise, only seems to do it when the temps are cooler. I swear I smell oil from the engine bay when I park it, but maybe those are exhaust fumes from a leak?

 

Possibly, it just sounds too loud... I know what valvetrain chatter due to low oil pressure sounds like, I'm not hearing it... Maybe it's the speakers I'm using, but I'm not hearing that??

 

Yeah, not sure. Car will be sitting for most of this week actually so I'm going to take it to the dealer soon, luckily I have a warranty but I'm hoping its nothing serious. Thanks for your help man

 

Yeah i get this also! Mostly on Cold starts, and because the car is sitting all week.

 

LS1SSChris I can tell you the good news and bad news.


Bad news 1st

its the timing belt tensioner is leaking oil and the pin is flopping around when cold. This symptom show best when the ambient temperature around 40 degrees or lower. It will make noise on initial start up but when driven to warm up the noise completely disappearing making it hard even dealer to diagnostic. You will need to replace water pump and timing belt while the tensioner is replace (unless you want to pay twice for labor).

Good news

you can now check and see if the oil pump assembly leak and get it reseal while you have TB/WP out and the other thing is now you do not have to worry about the 105k service again for another 105k miles.



TB/WP is around $1100 (Acura dealer) or 7 hours of labor (by the book)
Timing belt tensioner is around $90 (as of 2013)
oil pump assembly re seal (4 hours of labor time) however most dealer will discount if you get it done along with your TB/WP.

 

This is what I had figured it was from the start, I saw a video on Youtube of a 3.2 TL making the same noise and the guy was saying it ended up being the timing belt tensioner. My car was bought with a warranty from a Carmax so hopefully it works like advertised and I can just have the tensioner replaced. If not, looks like I'll be spending that $1000+ on a timing belt job at 75k miles

 

^^^ don't feel bad, I bought my TL-S at 60k miles and it already started to making noise and even recently my base TL at 75k miles also making the same noise. I waited about 28k miles and did the TB/WP at 88k miles on my TL-S. I will wait for the base TL reach close to 105k to get the TB done, this is why I highly recommend people replace all the tensioner, rollers and seal while you have the WP/TB out.

 

You let your tensioner rattle for that long? It didn't damage anything? Every time I hear that noise in the morning it makes me feel like something is going to break

 

yup no damage was done, you will need to be easy on the throttle while waiting for it to warm up.

 

Truonghthe saves the day lol. I was wondering what on earth that sounded like, cause it definitely wasn't an oil pressure problem lol

 

That what you get for owned five Honda J series engine

 

Well in that case it might make sense to wait a little bit until I can do the timing belt. Guess I won't worry about it for now, thanks man

 

I would put in a claim with your carmax warranty and see how that goes, fix it if they approve it and if they deny the claim then keep carry on.

 

That's exactly what I plan to do, thanks for all your help man.