This past weekend I drove a car I was thinking about buying and still am thinking about. I have one concern about it though and here it is:

Car is an 04 with 84k miles and a 6mt

When your in a given gear and get the rpm's to around 5k or a little above there is a sort of grinding or chattering noise from the what sounded like right side of the engine bay. It almost sounded like something was hitting something it shouldn't be or maybe something was rattling?

Any ideas on what this could be or anybody have this happening on their car?

 

Your description makes me think this is NOT what it is, but it's worth mentioning:

There's a plastic undershroud underneath the front end - below the engine, which seems to loosen and/or wear out. Mine gave out about a month after I got the G, and started flapping/chattering at highway speeds (pretty scary when it first happened). A couple of the screws had worked themselves loose, 1 sheared off from the flapping, etc.

It was speed-based though - not RPM based.

 

Take it to a mechanic to get it out checked out if you are really considering the car. If not look elsewhere. IIRC there is another car that you are interested in so maybe you should go with that.

I doubt you want to spend money and buy a car fix it up and stuff atfer.

 

The car is actually at an Infiniti dealership so that is another piece to the puzzle...

 

This car is at an Infiniti dealership. The other cars I was looking at i'm not really interested in anymore.

I might call and tell them to see if they can figure out what it is.

I would also add that it seemed to make the noise when I wasn't on the gas, or was barely. So I would be sitting in the gear at the 5k rpm range and it would start this noise. Couldn't hear it as I remember when you were accelerating through this rpm range only when it was held around this range.

 

I guess the service manager rode in the car and said that it was just an engine vibration. He also said that 8 out of 10 will do this.

Does this sound weird to anyone?