Rattle/click when stopped and in DRV

Hello All,

I am the new owner of a 1999 Astral Silver VX. Woo Hoo. I bought this in MA and as a HS graduation gift to my son and his best friend, I flew them to Boston to pick up the vehicle and drive it home to Florida where it will spend the rest of its life...I hope. :) They are staying with various friends and relatives and making the trek home over 5 days.

So I have not seen the car other than photos and looks like in fairly good shape with only 76k on the ODO.

My question is coming from him. When he stops car while in drive he hears a very distinct rattle/clicking sound. When he shifts into N or P it stops. When he drives it stops.

Can anyone explain if this may be serious. He is spending the day in DC tomorrow and I was going to arrange for him to drop off at a dealer/repair in the morning if this is serious.

Mox

Might check the heat shields on the cats. They are known to come loose and rattle

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Triathlete

Might check the heat shields on the cats. They are known to come loose and rattle

---

X2 - first thing i had to fix on mine when i got it

Thanks for the intel. Does not sound serious and should not cause too much of a problem for the rest of the their trip.

Other than that and front passenger window binding, all seems to be in good working order (insert knock on wood here).

I was fearful it might be a gasket on tranny or manifold that was causing problem.

Thanks for the quick responses

X3 - I just secured the heat shields (all over the exhaust system) with metal straps. Since your car was in MA (I bought mine from IL), there could be minor to significant rust that causes the existing metal brackets to crumble or get loose. Hopefully that will solve that issue!!!

If you haven't read up on it PLEASE remind them to check the oil regularly. At every fill up, and maybe more often until you know how much oil your particular VX uses (if any at all). The engines are prone to drinking oil. Some of them sip oil while others guzzle it. Just don't want the engine to go kablooey on them on the way home.

OK, back to your issue; did your son say where the rattling was coming from? The heat shields are a likely suspect, but it could be something else. Since it goes away when in park it more than likely isn't coming from the engine. There have been reports of ticking sounds coming from the engines when/if the timing belt tension pulley goes bad.