Intermittent noise from engine bay

[ratterrier]

Hi folks,

Explaining and identifying a noise is probably one of the more challenging things to get right, but if anyone can key in on this please let me know.

My '96 Explorer has been lately making a noise which vanishes if I gun the accelerator. The sound is close to what you might get if you blew across the top of an empty soda bottle. I've once tried to pop open the hood to determine where the source was, but couldn't track it. This sound does not appear very frequently, and I can't pinpoint it to anything I'm doing while driving.

My guess is it may be bearing related, or perhaps a water pump since my coolant level ran low before I discovered I had a head gasket leak. To complicate matters, sometimes I get a burning smell through my heating vents which doesn't necessarily occur when the sound does. Funny thing is that it smells more like a burning brake than anything else, and I don't suspect the fan belt because that would produce more of a squealing noise and smoke (had that happen already).

If anyone has any ideas where I might look, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks,
Richard

 

[Rustang©]

Hey man,

You have a unique situation here, i'd take a look at your front calipers, make sure they arn't binding up or anything(burning smell)

as for the noise, it sounds as if you have an exhaust leak, possibly from the down-tubes or manifold. This would explain the noise you described as well as its disappearing act at WOT.

Good Luck man
-Dan

 

[Texan01]

The sound is more like the Idle Air control valve (silver can looking thing on the intake) Mine started doing that a while back, and it turned out to be that. not terribly expensive to replace and if you're handy with a screwdriver, you can replace it yourself and save some money that way. On mine, it sounded like it was mooing or moaning through the passenger side headlight where the air intake is. Several people have covered that on here before.

The smell, I've replaced the heater core in my 95 twice now, (204,000 miles!) and each core I've put in, smells different than the one before. does the smell go away when you have the system on max a/c? there's a valve that allows coolant to flow to the heater core except when the system is set to "off" or "Max A/C" . it could also be the fan motor getting ready to go out also, another easy fix, much easier than the heater core on a 2nd gen.