Cured my engine knock/rattle! (I think)

supark said:

The 96 4.0 XJ I just bought last week came with a troubling rattle/knock at idle that would disappear completely when I got on the gas. It would only show up once the car had warmed up for a few minutes. After some research on this forum, it sounded a lot like loose flex plate bolts.

Put the car in neutral and removed the trans inspection cover plate. Even in neutral the flex plate was a b!tch to rotate, but I was not surprised to find that the 3 of the 4 bolts were just a little bit tighter than finger tight.

Figuring out how to put the inspection plate on just right took me a few minutes - I ended up actually snipping a little bit of metal off one side to make it easier to slip in out. Just took it for a test drive for 6-7 miles and the knock/rattle is completely gone! This forum rocks!!

Sidenote - I think the rattle was why the seller was trying to get rid of it, so I got it for a good price for a (hopefully) pretty easily solved and harmless issue.

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supark said:

if you look at the bell housing of the transmission, there's a plate covering the lower 5-6" of the opening of the bell housing. It's held on with 4 bolts/nuts. The larger nuts were on there pretty damn tight, so I had to use a breaker bar to get more leverage. You'll see once you get in there, but the two large bolts/nuts are the main thing that holds the inspection plate on. I put the car in neutral and used a pry bar to move the flexplate.

Just drove it to the airport this morning - about a 15-20 mile drive and when I parked the car in the short term lot, no sign at all of the clatter still! So stoked it was such a simple fix - car now sounds perfectly normal at idle.

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