Thread: Engine knock, fearing the worst

Please watch this Youtube and let me know if this is a bad rod bearing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOlCi...ature=youtu.be

The car is a 1999 GT with 89,000 miles (although I have often suspected odometer fraud).

History: about 1 week ago the engine started making an odd noise like in the video. As I was shooting this video yesterday the car died and would not start again. The starter could barely turnover the motor after the stall and now it cannot turnover at all. I had the battery and starter checked at the parts store, both are good (also, there was no indication prior to this that the battery or starter were going bad). There has been no work done to the vehicle in the past year. I removed the spark plugs last night and used an inspection camera to check the combustion chamber. I didn't see anything out of the norm. With the spark plugs removed I tried cranking the motor and it wouldn't budge. Opinions/advise please.

-Andrew B.

K, I'll try removing the belt this afternoon. That is my vid. The oil appeared normal on the dipstick.

The oil is clean. Got the engine able to crank again by turning the balancer pully.

Btw, I recently started using synthetic oil, could that have caused a rod bearing failure?

Not much, just turned in the opposite direction of engine rotation maybe 1/8 of a turn. It wasn't difficult but I also was using a 1/2 inch breaker bar.

Originally Posted by Scottydoggs

just how hard did you have to pull to get it to move again? and it still wont fire back up?

dont think the oil could cause this.

The car started again for a few seconds but was making an awful high pitch squeal sound in addition to the knock. The engine died before I had a chance to do anything else.

Unless the oil was super low. From the sound of the vid it looks like it's engine swap time. Just seems odd that it did it w/o eating coolant like we would expect especially at lower mileage. Wonder if the UIM cracked and dumped a bunch of coolant in it??

Originally Posted by Bills1997GTP

I'm curious to know what caused it .


Sent from my iPhone

Me too. I guess I'll start checking junk yards for another 3.8. I'm assuming any 3.8 from 1997-2003 will work.

Got everything apart and found the culprit, spun the #5 rod bearing. I'll try to post pics tomorrow.

Below are the pictures of the blown engine. I got a used 2006 Lucerne motor with 37,070 miles from ebay (the last pic is the ebay engine). Got the engine installed and running a few days ago thanks to the great write-ups on this forum (I used billboosts engine R&R method). There was very little that had to be swapped over from my blown Series II motor to the Series III (UIM, injectors, oil filter housing). Everything is good except an odd vibration when the car comes to a stop and sometimes while turning at very low speeds.
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Incase anyone is curious who sold me the motor for future reference (scroll down on the page).

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ENGINE-2006-...vip=true&rt=nc