Hi all,
I recently have had a ticking nosie thats developed only when I'm driving the jeep as soon as i let off the gas its gone. The nosie doesn't happen at idle, and gets louder if I'm driving up hill. I recently puts a remanufactured motor in last summer so I don't believe the sound is by the motor. I do think that it can be from a cracked flexplate but it doesn't seem to fit in that category.

 

It is likely an exhaust leak at the exhaust manifold.

 

So I ended up dropping the transmission and inspected the flexplate but there was no issues there. I also just replaced the exhaust manifold because it was warped and the nosie comes back.

 

Electric fan or mechanical fan clipping fan shroud?

Inspect the locating tabs on the bottom side of either part. Not untypical for either them to brake off or crack and wiggle/wobble dance a bit into other things

 

I am in the process of finishing up a small project turned huge for the exact same thing. I did all the research I could before even thinking about posting the question then, when I did, I got the exact same answers you did that it’s probably the exhaust manifold, lifter tick, pressure plate, etc.. turns out that it was a deformity or irregularity on the surface of block side and not the intake manifold or gasket itself ended up having to have it resurfaced, which was not the route I had anticipated, but after replacing literally every gasket and seal from top to bottom and front to back, I still had that darn ticking sound, and it was driving me insane. End result for me was after replacing the intake exhaust manifold gasket, valve cover gasket, rear main seal, oil and transmission pan gaskets along with some vacuum lines and new rocker and lifter kit, with all the fluids dumped and replaced.. fired her up and almost immediately got white smoke and the tick but this time it was a massive amount of smoke and the coolant smell was very noticeable, thats when the head gasket blew out in the rear of the block because of all the new gaskets, seals, and vac leaks stopped the pressure found its escape route. Short story long, that ticking sound is the least of your problem. It doesn’t matter how many times you change the manifold gasket place the manifold whatever you try to do because most likely the block surface where the gasket and manifold mount has a deviation in it somewhere that regardless won’t completely seal, and if it does manage to damp in the noise or stop the noise, you’re just having that pressure escape from another point that’s weaker than what you replaced with New. My dad gave me the best advice ever when it comes to these 4.0’s is that if you’re replacing gaskets and seals that are vital to your exhaust, cooling system and oil you might as well do them all at once if you can afford it. I think what happens most often especially with the stock X Js is that most of us don’t have hundreds and hundreds of dollars to throw down on all these little pieces so instead of buying full kits and doing the job right, we treat it as owners manual maintenance intervals, but way too late. My 97 is at 235,000 miles and many times it’s been time to change lots of things at the same time but instead of originally buying the full gasket and seal kit for top and bottoms, I opted for just changing the one that I needed all the while, having a brand new gasket and seal near or related to another one that’s just as old you’re just gonna keep repeating the same fail cycle.

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Thanks for the reply, I currently do not have a fan shroud on, but i did go through the pulleys and brackets on the alternator and steering but the issue remains

 

Thanks for the reply, i dont believe my head is warped because the remanufactured moter only has 3k on it. The exhaust manifold was warped because I forgot to torque the exhaust bolt. I heard that sometimes you can get bad gas and that can make the noise.

 

https://www.cherokeeforum.com/f2/wha...-noise-265909/
The forum I linked has the metal rattling nosie on a video. I was also was able to get to the nosie to happen from puting it in drive and reverse and holding the brakes while applying some gas.

 

I'm starting to think the torque converter is starting to go out, what do you guys think?