engine noise and other questions

[adalittle]

first off, LOVE the car.

2002, with the v6 engine. bought the car from carmax back in march with 66k on it. i've already put on about 10k because of work.

i got the extended warranty so every repair i take it in for, its 50 bucks no matter how many things are wrong with it. so that is a great thing.

to the noise, when idle the engine is really quiet. when accelerate though, there seems to be a ratteling noise (best i can describe it) coming from the engine. the noise will stop when i take my foot off the gas. step on the gas and it is there again. could this be a belt? i would assume they checked all the belts and replaced them before selling the car to me.

the color of the car is the goldish hue. nothing wrong with the color, just not my top pick. how well does this car, or cars in general hold up with aftermarket paint jobs? say hot purple...ha-ha wow that sounds horrible. but you get the idea. actually thinking of black.

final question, i've noticed that when it rains heavily, water is leaking in from the front passenger pillar. anyone else have a similar problem? there is a spot on the pillar near the roof that becomes soaked and drips water and i would assume drips down to the door storage pocket. i've found a nice 2inch puddle there.

otherwise car is great. i'm going to research out to clean the headlight covers. they are getting that yellows tint to them. would like to get them nice and clear again. i'm one of those people who is totally not auto mechanics gifted. it'll be a nice little bonding experince for me and car

thanks
-rob

 

[NYC LS8]

Leaky sunroof drain. Gonna have to take the headliner and A pillar off to fix it. Pretty common issue with these cars.

Enjoy the car and welcome to here.

 

[Early Bird]

That rattling could be coming from your catalytic converters... I had the same problem, they changed them out with a whole new setup all the way to the back, for free... If that's what it is, then it's covered under warranty...

 

[rickztahone]

have them fix the leak problem under warranty

 

[NYC LS8]

Rattling could also be pinging. What grade gas do you use?

 

[adalittle]

Thanks for the information. I'm going to take the car in as the rubber casing, or housing components of my brake peddle make a deflation sound when pressed. Like a the noise maker in a dog toy. Some of them have that rectangular shape and accordion style ridges.

I will surely mention for them to check the drain of the sun roof. I'm actually going to try blowing it out with a can of compressed air that i use for my computer case. Until I bring it in, want to try that if it rains.

As to the gas, well when I got the car, I bought the high grade all the time. But with the spike of gas we saw in the summer and my need to drive 180 miles round trip for work, i had to cut back to regular. I've since moved to within 20miles of my job, so gone is that drive and I'm back to the high grade stuff.

Those fuel additives which say the "clean your fuel system", do those work? Wondering if I should try something since i ran about 8k miles on regular gas.

Thanks.

 

[JWerner2]

Just start using better gas.

If you feel the need I would maybe use something like seafoam. Many people on this site use and it does work. You can put some in the gas tank and then put some in the vacuum lines. If the problems are something like dirty injectors and not just ping from lower grade gas the seafoam will clean those out nice.