tracy08172002

Hey all! Just recently bought the beautiful 85 XJ in my profile pic with the "fantastic" 2.8. Had a new 38 Weber put on it and I spent a few minutes fine tuning it. Got it tuned just perfectly by the end of my venture, barely dropped RPM's when loaded with the AC Compressor kicking on. Got excited as it was sitting in the shop all week, put up all my tools, went to crank it up to back it out of the shop and this started happening:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sh8oeshyxq...51_PM.mp4?dl=0

What the camera doesn't pick up is the slight squeal and that it's not as hard a knock but a softer knock. Checked the oil for any shavings, even drained the pan and rubbed my finger on the inside and no shavings...yet.

The engine swap to the 3.4 has always been in the back of my mind and was going to happen eventually. But I'm not convinced the engine is shot just yet. I took a look at the harmonic balancer yesterday and will attach the pictures below:










Part of the knock was also coming from the power steering pulley being extremely loose but I ended up fixing that last night.

I'm no expert and am rather quite new at working on vehicles, so go easy on me. Does the harmonic balancer look okay or is that rubber coming out a sign of separation? If it's okay, what do you guys make of the knock in the video?

I know going ahead and swapping to the 3.4 is going to be the first option on everyones mind. It's coming, I promise, but not right now. What do y'all think?

BlueRidgeMark

I wouldn't trust the balancer.

The video does not play for me. .MOV is pretty old-school. MPG is much more universal.

tracy08172002

Gotcha, just updated the link in the original post. Let me know if it works

BlueRidgeMark

It works.

Yikes! If it's not the harmonic balancer, that engine is in serious trouble!


Mechanic's stethoscope.

tracy08172002

The Balancer doesn't seem to be giving much play to be moved, so I've put that in the back of my mind as an issue. Haven't ruled it out, but not precedent at this moment.

I took a timing light to after letting it warm up for a bit, and the timing marks are very erratic, jumping back and forth. Distributor looks and operates fine.

EZEARL

Sorry but my server won't let me do most videos so I can't listen to yours. If the timing mark is as erratic as you say your noise may be the timing chain hitting the inside of the cover. Hopefully some who knows what that sounds like can listen to your video.

fb97xj1

Pull the belts and see if the squeal is still there.

tracy08172002

Thanks for the input on this. Did it and identified the squeal plus a bit of the knock coming from a loose power steering pulley. So that's one problem down.