[watusa]

The last few months I've noticed a chirp coming from the engine bay. It is a constant speed and ONLY happens on load. When I'm in neutral and rev the motor it chirps a few times then stops, but in drive it chirps pretty consistently when the acceleration is happening. As soon as I let off the gas the chirp stops.

 

[Andrew S]

Torque down your spark plugs. happened to me and that's all it was, couple plugs were a little loose. if that doesn't stop it i'm sure someone else will have a suggestion.

 

[watusa]

Thanks. I've ordered a new set, since it's been maybe 30k miles since I've replaced them. I'll swap them out in a few days and report.

 

[watusa]

That fixed it. I haven't gotten my new plugs yet but the chirping was getting louder and I wanted to make sure I didn't give myself a problem because I was lazy. Here is a picture of the coil pack. You can see which one was too loose. I torqued the rest tighter just to make sure.

 

[Andrew S]

That fixed it. I haven't gotten my new plugs yet but the chirping was getting louder and I wanted to make sure I didn't give myself a problem because I was lazy. Here is a picture of the coil pack. You can see which one was too loose. I torqued the rest tighter just to make sure.

sweet man. glad it worked out for you. I remember that noise driving me nuts and i fixed it almost by accident. i was checking the gap on my plugs and noticed that a couple unscrewed way too easy so after i torqued em all to spec, Boom, problem solved.

 

[NickD]

Must have noticed a modest improvement in performance and fuel economy as well. Blow by can easily blow out that spark.

Kind of chirping noise I experienced was problems in the PCV circuit, also causes blow by, but of a different nature.

 

[watusa]

Yeah, I got the new plugs in today and torqued them down with a torque wrench to 18 lb ft as suggested - last time I tightened it "enough" with my standard equipment - won't be doing that again. I was going to try a larger gap (.032) but stuck with the pre-gap of .028.

Regarding fuel effeciency, I think you are right, it has gone up a lot (though it s been a lot warmer too, so it's hard to gague how much it improved. Running 40.6 MPG right now on about 250 miles. Last fill-up was 38.6 (sub freezing temps though).