VR6 knocking noise coming from head

[420sx]

My buddies 01 VR6 has been giving him trouble, and VW is a bit out of my comfort zone. Its making a pretty nasty noise when revved above idle. It sounds like a nut rattling around inside the intake manifold. Im 95% sure the bottom end is fine. Can anyone who is experienced with VR's shed some insight on what kind of bill we're gonna be lookin at? Im hoping its something simple.. my buddy is already looking at heads on vwvortex. I plan to take a video and post it this afternoon.

[Foolinaround]

Only real way to check is rip off the VC,if you dont see anything drop the pan and look at the bearings.

[420sx]

Rip off the valvecover? Have you seen a VR6 motor? Its all intake manifold!

[Foolinaround]

Yeah i have,its a nightmare,but when it comes to internal engine sounds the only real way to find out is to go,well,internal.

[Elliott18t]

more likely this..

http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?1264409

ooops thats 12v hold on.

[Elliott18t]

here are the commons...

http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?3206033 it is more likely any of those than anything else you can think of unless this car was 100% uncared for previously.

bets still on chain..

[evomike]

It probably needs chains or I'm not sure if this year has the plastic gear that breaks.

[Foolinaround]

Do these motors have a chair guard? like 240's? those tend to rattle in the KA motors.

[ein]

As said before, it sounds like chains. The chain guides can break up and make noise in the side of the motor.

[420sx]

Alright, thanks guys. Isnt the timing chain on the trans side of the motor? Are we lookin at the type of job we can do ourselves without months of downtime, or should we just bring it somewhere? Like I said, I know nothing about VW's except how to detail them, lol.

[cbirgl]

Chains are a pain you need to drop the trans and pull the side covers and get it all timed up properly. I would check intake mani bushings before tearing into the chains, though.

[clubken]

how many miles are on it ken? intake bushings usually don't make noise until the switchover (3-4k rpms i believe), if it's over 100k its likely to be the chains

[420sx]

Its at 88k miles. Im fairly certain we've got it figured out- the more I read about it, the more its looking like the intake manifold bushings. We ordered up the new ones that dont wear out from gruvenparts.com. All the videos we saw on youtube of this problem sounded exactly like what we're experiencing- although it appears we caught this pretty early in comparison to some of the others we heard.

My buddy was all down in the dumps thinkin he was gonna need to pull the motor, pull the head, etc- so needless to say, he was pretty ecstatic to hear it may be something much more simple. I said to him "hey, the guys on the forums said to check out the intake manifold bushings." He rolls his eyes and goes, "yeah, and i bet my muffler bearings are bad too!" Haha, i gotta be honest- "intake manifold bushings" really doesn't sound like a real part. Hopefully they arrive early this week, and we get to install them around Wednesday. Honestly guys- we cant thank you enough.

[cbirgl]

Let us know how it goes. I can't say for sure that will fix it because I didn't see it in person, but I can't tell you how many times I've seen chains replaced and the noise was still there!

[420sx]

Bushings came in yesterday. Installed in 20 minutes. Problem solved. Thanks guys!