Excessive valve chatter at idle while hot?
 

I noticed last night that at idle my engine sounds awful in my 2017 BRZ. The noise is very obviously from the valvetrain, it sounds like a significant amount of metal-to-metal contact. Is this normal, or should I have the dealer examine the valvetrain? There's no other behavior that seems problematic to me, but man, it sounds terrible.

Yep, have noticed this as well as soon as it started getting hot. Definitely didnt hear this amount of noise in the winter time though. It makes me not want to drive my car hard lol

Can you take and post a video/audio for us to listen to .. ??

Is the oil level OK ..??

Examining the valve train on this engine is not an easy task. Not like the old OHV engines ..... pop the valve cover off and have a listen.

I wouldn't worry about it unless it gets louder.


humfrz

This your first direct injectected engine? At the dealer we get a lot of people complaining about the direct injector making loud clicking noise but it’s normal


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You sure it's valvetrain noise and not injectors?

Thanks for the replies everyone. I'm not 100% sure it's the valves instead of the injectors, but the cadence of it made me think it was the valves. It's definitely coming from where the heads are at, but I suppose that could be DI as well. Doesn't happen normally, only when the engine is fully up to temp and it sits idling for awhile. I had pulled in last night to do some inspection after my track day and had the hood up, and with the hood up it's very loud and very obvious.

Oil level and coolant level are fine. Nothing else seems to be out of order. If I hear it again I will record a video to help with diagnosis. I wish I'd thought to do that last night.

The DI and the PI switch back and forth based upon demand. They are noisy as crap and sound just like on old V8 that is going to pop a valve at any second. After 4 years and over 100,000 miles it still freaks me out a little. It is indeed fine though.

That is exactly what this sounded like. Must be the injectors then. I'm glad to know it's normal and nothing to be concerned about. There weren't any other indicators of a problem, but if I'd heard that in any of my prior vehicles I'd have been towing it to a mechanic's shop.

Yep. The very first time I pulled into a drive through and those clicks started echoing off the wall my heart froze since I had heard that noise far to many times over the decades. When you are at idle it is the port injectors working with the direct that you can hear. That is why they are nosier.

Anytime you hear a noise, poke around with a stethoscope.

mm nope. idle when hot it uses only DI.
cold start it does DI PI together, then switch quit fast to ONLY PI during warm up, then switch to normal idle and use only DI
after 191 flash on my brz i learnt this too good to be wrong

you can see the Pi to DI % maps to check that at idle load it doesnt use PI

can t trll you right now what is louder from outside, but from inside the cabin of my my17 i hear louder clicks when only the DI is used

I've pored through a bunch of videos of DI noise on YouTube and I've pretty conclusively determined that this is what I heard. Man, it sounds awful... Everyone described it as "ticking", but that's not nearly a violent enough word. I guess all is normal :)

Thanks a ton for the information and help everyone.

I'd never get out of the driveway. :(

It's the happy crickets singing you "Aloha ... Oi! Ye bastid!"