I am the original owner of the car. It has about 75,000miles, I noticed yesterday with the windows down that there was a loud rattle coming from the engine. It was occuring at all speeds, the car seemed to be running perfectly from an engine response view. What is it? Anybody else reported this? Doing a search I find lots of death rattle threads about R56 engines, but not R53.

Help!!!

JC

 

Could be several things, pop the hood and determine where about the noise is coming from. Could be belt tensioner, heat shield rattle, maybe supercharger, etc. timing chain cassette are very common failure on R56 but I haven't personally seen any on a first gen go bad.

 

Crank pulley dampener?

 

Are you sure it's from the engine bay and not possibly an exhaust or suspension rattle up front? Does it occur at idle? Or when sitting and revving it up a little? Can you post a video for us? Might help.

 

It is definitely in the engine bay. When I pulled it in the garage, I opened the hood and it was loud. I am reluctant to fire up the car until I have an idea what I am dealing with. I hope someone hear will offer a clue.

JC

 

Could be a number of things as Hot.Damn. mentioned above. Here is a video on NAM with a rattle issue someone had. See if it may be similar to your sound.

 

Two most common rattles on the r53 are the supercharger and belt tensioner. However my 05 R53 had a rattle I just fixed and it turned out to be the alternator. It was starting to seize and was cracked in three different spots.

 

My rattle is more prominent than that video. Sounds the same all of the time, throttle makes no difference. It sounds like it is right at the top, which I would guess would imply the supercharger.

JC

 

My 06 R53 just did the bad tensioner timing chain rattle a few weeks ago at about 74k. Changed the tensioner out - 10 minute job. Fixed her up in a jiffy. If it is the tensioner used a 3/8 wobble head extension and you can change it out without taking anything else off.

Good luck whatever it is.