Loud clicking nosie coming from very front of engine
 

I replaced my water pump, thermostat, and thermostat housing 2 days ago. Drove the Jeep earlier today and no problems. Fired it up again and it's making a loud ticking noise. I popped the hood and it seems like it's coming from the very front. I am very nervous. Here is a video

All i get is "An error occurred, Please try again later."

Try it again. I redid the link.

It works now. I dont know what it is, but that doesnt sound good. Lifters or pistons are my best guess. Use a stethoscop on the valve cover. If you dont have one, use a screwdriver. Put the tip to the cover and the handle to your ear. A rubber hose works just as well.

Sounds like a lifter. Maybe a bent push rod. Probably not the cam cause it happened too quick. You need to remove the the valve cover to confirm those.

That said, what brand of water pump did you put it? Perhaps it is not coincidental that this tick happened to so soon after that. Given the hz of the click, it seems too fast to be a lifter. Undo the serpentine and spin the water pump by hand.

Could be more than one lifter. What's the oil pressure?

If you're idling at 750 RPM, one lifter would be hitting at 375 times per minute, or 6.25 times per second...

One possibility is the water pump impeller is hitting the cylinder barrel. I got a pump from NAPA once that I couldn't turn by hand once installed. When I returned it, we found the impeller was 1/16" too far out on the shaft. In operation, that's all it clears by. Of course it would have to be metal because plastic would have already broken.

Wow. Yeah, it -could- be a lot of things.

But the most reasonable possibility is that you got a bad water pump and it is failing after 1 day of use. Remove the belt and turn it by hand to see if you feel anything unusual (like the blades making contact with anything inside).

Quite a bit more reasonable than the chances of 2 separate lifters bending or failing coincidentally after changing a water pump.

Also, you can run the motor for a few moments with the belt removed to see if the click persists. If the click persists - then that might rule out the water pump.

I have to agree with Jordan. You changed the water pump and immediately thereafter (anything in the first 24 hours can be considered "immediate") you get noise AND it's from the general area of the repair?!? All common sense and logic points to this being directly related to the water pump replacement.
It's certainly possible that a lifter issue developed coincidentally, but let's work with the prime suspect rather than an extreme edge case - check the water pump as Jordan suggested and let's go from there.

I think that it's either what Jordan mentioned - a failed "out of the box" water pump, or as Dave suggested, the pump interfering due to slight size deviation. You can and should also rule out any interference with the belt/pulley in the engine compartment. I don't know off-hand if the mechanical fan is touched when you do the water pump, but if it was, make sure it's not hitting anything, also make sure nothing like a hose clamp is contacting the belt or pulley. That stuff should be pretty easy/obvious and you may have already checked it.

Thank you for your suggestions everyone. I removed the belt and spun the pump by hand a few times. I didn't hear any strange noises or feel a significant amount of resistance. I double checked to make everything is torqued down to spec. I put the belt back on and now there is no noise. I'm not sure if something was whacking something else because both fans could spin freely. It makes me wonder if there was a loose bolt that just needed to be tightened a little bit more or something like that? It's very strange and I don't have much faith in this water pump. I'm going to drive around later today and see if my temperature gauge stays at 210. It was a Gates one I got from Amazon, so if it does go bad, I can just send it back. Amazon usually has a good return policy.

I've been running a Gates water pump since November of 2016 and it's doing just fine.

Coincidentally....me too.

I hope my Gates is too. Just did it last week.

Take a look around the path of the belt. I"m betting you'll find some fresh wear marks where it was hitting.

That sounded like the fan hitting the AC lines up by the battery. I had that happen twice. Those AC lines can shift out of the holding brackets and run right into the mechanical fan. There is not a lot of distance there and a little shift will make the fan hit those lines.