Thread: 3.4 knock

inspection cover on a fwd trans? i pulled a 4l60e last yr. i think it had one. but that is RWD. going to go look at the nox and see whats on the bottom of trans bell housing. you can force flex plate for/rev and possibly hear/feel a flexplate crack. or run motor and use stethoscope to listen to it. the part about using a screwdriver to check rod knock sounds good. since intake is off i can reach all plugs fairly well. ah, life is so much fun

Nox has af-33 trans. Not a 4t65-e. You remove starter to access flexplate bolts. There is no access plate that I am aware of. Next step?

Lol didn't know what you meant by "nox " at first! Lol and you're right. That stinks. Hm... I'd use the screwdriver check next then go ahead and do the lifters/ pushrods/ rocker swap.

One other thought is to remove the oil filter and cut it apart. If you see any "glitter", run! You could also swap the oil plug with a magnetic one to see what sticks.

Anything to avoid pulling the trans to check the flexplate! Haha

Originally Posted by BillBoost37

Yeah..it's possible to break a flex plate, especially if mounts are bad.

From a guy that broke one and thought....it's either rod knock or a flex.. you can listen to it and or pull motor and check it. Easy enough to do. Just drain the coolant, lift up and presto.. Some are going to say it's not that easy, I think it is.. lol

Lol Bill, you would say pulling a porche 991 is easy!

Probably not much worse than a 3800 and those are easy. My only experience pulling one is my wife's Aztek, and you can't get it out the top with the heads on because of the dash. Grand prix 3.4s are probably not that bad.

Originally Posted by BillBoost37

I figure it's not much worse than a 3.8.

You drop a jack under the passenger end of the trans, do the converter bolts, trans to engine bolts, drain the coolant, push the wiring to the side and lift. Honestly.. I did my regal so fast the wife asked me why I had the garage door open when I was trying to show her I drove the car back to this house......when 1.5 hours earlier I sent her a pic of the motor in the air. The woman expects too much from me now

Lol I know what you mean. Just don't try to drop the oil pan in the car. Took me the better part of a day because you can't really reach the cross bolts in between the engine and transmission, and you have to do a dance with the engine mount by dropping the subframe and lifting the engine enough to let the oil pan clear.

it is back together. replacing lifters is hard enough but you add the step of removing them from another rig and the job grows. i did get another egr tube as the original one had a big split in the bellows. and a dipstick tube as the welded on tab snapped off when i pulled the heads 2 weeks ago. now, add oil and water and see whats up.

It's fixed. Was it the dang 2 switched pushrods? I swapped out the rocker/lifters/pushrods from boneyard nox.

Nice! Yeah, these cars are ultra picky about the pushrod order, and the lifters tend to get noisy when gummed up. Luckily you caught it before anything major happened!