[Closed] Car mechanic advice reqd.

AStra G?

Mine did that... had it for four years did that for 2 of them, got progressively worse by the* end was doing it all the time and would stall if you took it out of gear/put the clutch in for more than a few seconds.

*I never serviced it or changed the oil in 4 years so cannot really blame the car.

Yep, astra g estate. Rest of the car is immaculate condition. Just worried about this noise. Not had a lot of luck with cars and want this one to last a bit longer.

Loose aux/drive belt. I changed the tensioner on my focus and used a cheap belt. Tapping noise occurs in mornings and stopping at lights. It was a tappity noise which concerned me. Bought belt from fords and no problem at all. It's cheap to replace. Get yourself to vauxhall and buy a new belt first as they are cheap. I was told that it could be injectors on my car. But it was just the belt. Even though I have an auto tensioner pulley cheap belts can stretch too much. When the noise occurs which side of the engine or whereabouts is the noise coming from?

I sold mine about 6 months ago for peanuts as I didn't want the scrap it and couldn't afford to fix it so unfortunately never really looked into exactly what the problem was. I saw it being driven the other day so it hasn't exploded yet!

Does the noise disappear when the engine is revved?

can also be the pulleys on the AUX belt.

i had a siezed tensioner and an idler that was drier than the sahara.

not familiar with the astras engine but on my vehicle because only the Power steering pump and alternator run off the drive belt i pulled the aux belt and ran it on the drive with it not attached for a bit - no noise.

put it back - noise

then went round the pulleys looking for which was the issue - greased the bearings up - no noise. Bought new tensioner and idler.

Job done

In the mornings it speeds up and down with the engine for 30-40 seconds, then goes quiet. Just read on another forum it can be the hydraulic tappets slow to warm up. Seems it's a known issue on these things.

+1 trail rat

Mine did that the other day (1.6 8v too), like you say 30 seconds later and it was fine. I swear these cars are pretty bullet proof. I managed to do 200 miles with little to no oil, no oil when I got home. I did wonder why it was doing 16mpg!

It needs fair bit of work this year, cambelt, clutch, exhaust, runs lumpy, not smooth through rev range and that's the bit's I know about. But I can't complain I've been driving it for 6-7 years and I think the only thing that was needed was a new pollen filter and 1 or 2 oil changes!

Ignore the noise, turn up the stereo. 😉

If its initially on start up, then its probably the hydraulic cam followers just taking a little longer to fill with oil, hence the tapping noise. As long as it stops then its probably ok.
Engine flushing can help unstick them a little.

Hmmm. So could it be when the oil has turned to mayo it does this? They are notorious for poor breathing, a good long journey turns it all back to black.

Common thing with the old 8v engines, it takes a short while to circulate oil around the hydraulic tappets, hence they go quite fairly quickly. If it's constantly tappety sounding it's more like to mean some wear to the tappets and valves, but they tend to go on forever but don't always sound that healthy. Too expensive and not really worth doing anything about if unless its a newer car.
Regular oil changes helps

Cambelt tensioner, common problem... its a new cam belt and tensioners I'm afraid. would do the water pump too.

(source: i'm a vauxhall specialist)

Use 0 30w oil and you will find the noise will last about five seconds! It's the oil pump trying to suck up thick cold oil in my experience!

sounds like a hydraulic tappet. if you change the oil it might help. when its cold the oil takes a little longer to take up the clearance so you will get a half engine order tap assuming it is only the one. if not new ones.

at tickover if its a four cylinder engine it should do it about 6 or 7 times a second