Ticking sound after timing belt change

[skoobeesnak]

Please help if you can. I recently bought a '87 325is which I love and decided it was due for a timing belt change (50K miles and 9 years on the old one!!!!). Everything went fairly smoothly on the change of the belt and tensioner and while I was there I changed the coolant pump as well to avoid having to do it later. So far so good, I started it up and now I hear a loud ticking sound that sounds exactly like a stuck lifter. The ticking speeds up with the engine RPM and slows down with the engine speed.

I checked the oil level and it is halfway between full and low so that should be fine. Before I tore it all back down again I was hoping for some advice on what you guys think it could be. The sound seems to be coming from the top of the motor on the passenger side, any help would be appreciated.

Mike

[skoobeesnak]

Bump

[ncipps]

i would check the valve clearance just to be sure. they may need adjustment.

Nick

[skoobeesnak]

That is what I thought of too but it wasn't ticking before I changed the belt. Either way I will be re-doing it completely today. It should be easier the second time around. I will post what I find out later. Thanks for the advice.

[skoobeesnak]

OK I tore it down again this weekend and figured out what I had done wrong the first time. I was misreading the timing marks on the crank wheel (I'm not sure what the correc term is for this part). I was looking at the arrow on the face of the plate instead of the little mark on the side of the wheel. If I would have paid a little more attention to the Bentley that I had open at the time I would have been OK but I was glancing at the picture instead of reading the entire caption. The arrow in the picture was actually on the cam gear and not the crank wheel. So I removed the belt, lined it up to the correct markings are put it back together and it sounds normal now except now I have a coolant hose leaking but I can fix that relatively easy. Thanks for the input guys, RTFM more carefully next time!

[ncipps]

glad you got it all worked out. we all make mistakes.

[dfyoung10]

You probably dodged a bullet on that one. Getting the valve timing very far off = disaster.

[skoobeesnak]

Yes I was lucky but I wasn't too worried since I was positive I had rotated the engine around 4 or 5 times to ensure that it wasn't hitting the valves. Now I just need to track down this power steering leak....