2010 4.0 Engine Tick

[GB1977]

Hello,
My wife told me her car was making some funny noises. We took it out for a ride, stopped in a parking lot. At a hot idle, I can hear a ticking on the left bank with the hood closed. I planned to dig in deeper at home then got sidetracked. I have a mechanics stethoscope I can check it further with tonight. This morning I could hear it on cold startup a bit, but it was louder at hot idle last night.

What should I check? Is some Marvel mystery oil a bad idea? I don't mind pulling off the valve cover and taking a look but would prefer to exhaust other options first. I did just switch to Mobil 1 HM about 3k ago, so maybe it knocked something loose?

I bit more info (may or may not be relevant). We bought the car a few years back, no idea how it was taken care of before. We had a garage my wife would take it to for oil changes. I recently started doing them myself (hence the change to Mobil 1. When I pulled the last oil change, I swear I could smell fuel or something other than oil. I've since changed all the spark plugs, which according to the pics on my haynes manual, were all running hot. We also replaced the radiator recently because we found a small leak.

 

[GB1977]

Oh I forgot to mention, about 164k on the odometer.

 

[Rcflyer330]

My guess is its the timing chains. Does the noise change with rpm?

 

[GB1977]

Update....I think its a noisy fuel injector instead. I put a stethoscope on the valve cover and it was smooth as silk. The fuel rail is pinging like crazy though. Going to run some Lucas through it before I do anything else.

As an aside, I've been reading a lot about the timing tensioners. Is it worth replacing them on this proactively? Most of the issues I've read about were pre-2004 , this is a 2010.

 

[donalds]

We have lots of vids on the sounds that your engine normal y. Makes

4.0 SOHC Timing Noise

 

[GB1977]

Thanks for the response. Post #19 on your link is exactly what i think I'm hearing.....so you're saying its fine? Would you replace the tensioners for peace of mind or forget about it?

 

[donalds]

If that's what your 4.0 sounds like I would say it's fine and I'm picky as hell

As far as the tensioner s I say don't touch them unless you have startup rattle on cold start

I installed a pre oiler to avoid the timing chains problems