It gives me much joy to report my '97 2.5 has developed a lovely new start up noise. I've attached a couple of sound files - one of a start up with the new noise and one of a normal sounding start up taken a moment after the noisy start up.
The sound of the noisy start up is a little higher pitched in real life than the sound recording and seems an awful lot like a noisy chain running over guides - you can hear something catch or lift at the 5-6 second mark and then the noise completely disappears.
I've only heard the noise three times and it has only done it when warm - but it has never happen before today and I only had one completely cold start.
*NOTE: YOU WILL NEED TO RENAME THE FILE EXTENSION TO ".m4a"
This forum won't accept file uploads with that extension to I changed the files to ".doc"
My guess is that one of the hydraulic chain tensioners is taking a while to kick in. Having said that, I'm not sure it should ever sound like that, even before the oil pressure has had a chance to build.
Thoughts? Thanks.
EDIT: youtube links added:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTy8jvx0VrY (bad noise)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCEYS_VFoKY (normal start up a few moments later)