The other night on my way to work I started to get a whine coming from the front of the engine. As with a turbo the whine gets louder as the rpm goes up. I have tried taking off the drive belts to isolate the sound but the sound did not quit. Any ideas where the sound would be coming from? Oil pressure is fine, no over heating, and no burning smells
Year and mileage would help a lot.
Which drive belts did you remove? Did you run the engine with no accessory drive belts at all?
If so, I have to ask about the timing belt and its tensioner. Has the timing belt been replaced? If so, how long ago? Was the tensioner also replaced?
Is the water pump driven by the timing belt? If so, was the water pump replaced with the timing belt?
If you eliminated the accessories as the source of the whine I have to speculate that something under the timing belt cover is the source of the noise.
The car has recently had the top of the engine overhauled. I replaced the timing belt, water pump but not the tensioner. When I tested it by removing the belts, I removed one accessory at a time and the whine was still there. I am thinking that I have a bearing going somewhere, the tensioner may be a good place to start. If the noise is coming from the water pump because of a bearing failure, would I have a antifreeze present from the seep hole? Of course it may only be alittle bit and since it is behind the timing cover I may not be able to see it.
It is very possible that the bearing in your belt tensioner is going dry.
Recently, I began (on an intermittent basis) to hear a whining noise when the engine was first started on a cool morning. By the process of elimination, I finally localized it to the tensioner’s bearing. I probably could have popped the bearing out and pressed a new one in, but I opted to just replace the tensioner since it had 95k miles on it at that point.
As I mentioned here in the past, it is pretty easy to pin point where a noise is coming from if you get a 2 foot piece of rubber hose, put one end to your ear and hold the other next to a suspect component. Or you can go to Harbor Freight and for around 5 bucks get a mechaincs stethoscope. Those things work remarkably well. This might prevent unnecessary parts changes.
The car is a 1993 with 220k miles. The engine is the 1.8 Mitsubishi. About 4 months ago I completed the top half overhaul. I replaced the head, water pump, timing belt, oil pump belt, accessory belts, along with some other stuff since it was opened up. I have driven it since then and the noise just started. The water pump is run by the timing belt. This weekend I am going to try and use the mechanics stethoscope to see if I can isolate the tensioner from the water pump. If i can’t isolate the noise then I guess I will be tearing it apart again and try turning them by hand to see if I can feel a drag or hear the noise.