Loud clacking, or slapping noise after start up. Came out of no where!

[Ohio1977]

Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

 

  Any ideas on what the noise from my subject line could be?  I'd send a short video if I could.  I honestly thought my serp. belt broke and was slapping around under the hood, so I took the wife's car to work.  After I got off work this morning.  I checked under the hood and the belt was there, along with the noise after I started it up again.  It really sounds like something is slapping against something else.

 

 

Thanks for any help/suggestions given.

 

 

P.S. I plan on checking again here in a few minutes, to see if something changes when the throttle is touched.  Neighbors have to be up by now.

[Ronnie]

The noise could be coming from the harmonic balancer on the crankshaft. Remove the belt and start the engine. If the noise gets better the balancer is likely to be what is causing the noise. Also, look at the front of the balancer and see if the you see cracks in the rubber as shown in the photo below. The balancer is made in two parts with the rubber separating them. When the rubber goes bad it allows the metal parts to bang together creating noise.

 

 

[GEMoore]

Exactly I had a bad dampner on my 90 sounded like marbles in a can at idle! Fairly simple replacement about an hours worth of work. 

[Padgett]

Good news is that the two metal pieces are captive so it won't fall apart (but sounds like it is). Worst at idle.