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Hello all, I recently discovered a tick coming from the top part of the motor, driver’s side. My best guess would be cam actuator or also possibly lifter tick (the noise can be heard down the valve cover on each coil) but I was wondering if anyone else had experience with this or recognize the noise. We’ve also established it’s definitely not rod knock due to the rhythm. The oil is full and good, and in my short term ownership has never gone below the min. Also if I were to replace whatever is making the noise, what else should I replace while i’m in there.
The car is also having an issue where it randomly occasionally wants to stall out when driving and putting it in neutral, don’t really think that could correlate with the tick and for that issue i’m leaning towards a bad cam sensor, just sucks since it’s not throwing any codes at all.
Most of the guys at the shop I work at are primarily Honda guys and they’re all giving me different answers. I would like to hear from some Infiniti guys. Appreciate the help.
I would definitely say its not a cam sensor. Unless the sensor is hitting something, it wouldn't make that sound, plus the sensor is on the back of the head. It sounds like either the sprocket on the cam is having issues or the actuator solenoid isn't working like it should. Either way, it could also be causing your car to want to cut off, because it could be effecting cam timing on that one bank. If you have access to a scan tool that can read cam timing, I would look at that. The cheapest start would be the actuator solenoid. If I'm not mistaken it's an easy replacement at least.
If it wasn't matching the ECM demanded cam angle it would throw a P0011 or P0021 code so I'm leaning towards it not being the intake cam actuators. So the cam actuators solenoids are working, HOWEVER they might have a broken damper on one of them. In the video were you unplugging the intake cam solenoids? Those solenoids bounce back and forth on a duty cycle controlled by the ECM. Fortunately they're easy to pull out and inspect. You don't have to unbolt the whole thing, just the single bolt that holds the actuator in place. Then you can bench test them with a 12v source (just pulse it don't hold 12v on it and keep it open) to see if it's extremely noisy on one side. Be careful with the o-rings and you won't need to buy new ones either so it can be a FREE cost troubleshoot.
You can also just unplug them and run the engine to see if the sound goes away, it will throw codes so you'll need to clear them later.
If that doesn't do it watch realtime data on your intake and exhaust cams, you have a rev-up engine so it has exhaust cam magnet retarders as well as bank1 exhaust, bank2 exhaust PID that can be looked at realtime.
