Hi Everyone,
First time poster to this forum though I reside on a lot of other car forums (mainly Saturn ones.) I'm having a helluva time trying to figure out what exactly happened to our 03 grandprix se with the 3.1l engine.
We were at 70mph with the cruise on and the speed just kept creeping up. I turned the switch off which did no good, hit the brake which did nothing, and finally put it in neutral. The car revved like crazy and I pulled over and shut it off. Before I shut it off I started getting this very loud ticking noise. I'm assuming some part failed as a result of that 30-45 second bumping the rev limiter but I'm having trouble figuring out what the likely culprit is. I just put a new engine in this car last December. Engine had 9k miles on it (yes, you read that right 9k.) We did the felpro LIM gasket and it's been doing great until this incident.
So as stupid as it probably was, I started it up and slowly raised the speed. I made it the 90+ miles home from where we were. I went searching through this forum and others as well as youtube. I found a video that demonstrates the sound I'm hearing but as far as nailing down the likely issue...there was nothing definitive. Here's a link to the video for reference: 3100 V6 Ticking Noise - YouTube
Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys!
Ben