I hope someone can help. I added a supercharger to my 350 over the past few weeks as well as some other things. Anyway I finished last week, started it up everything ran perfectly. I started it up this week and I got a strange sound only when I start it up and the engine is completly cold. It sounds like someone put a wrench in the engine and it's bouncing around in there and boy it's LOUD! 8O The strange part is after a little bit of time it varies from as little as 30sec up to 3 minutes it goes comlpetly away and will not come back until the engine completly cools down. What could it be? Any help will save what hair I have left on my head....so please hurry :lol:

August

My guess, bad lifter or piston slap.

I thought about as well but then would then I should be hearing the noise all the time I would think and like I said it only occurs at cold startup and only for a brief amount of time.

August

Classic symptoms of a bad lifter or piston slap.
There a short time then goes away.
Why, who knows?

You're going to have to make a judgment call here. If you are hearing metal to metal, you know you are damaging internals by running it more. Likely the parts are already damaged, or at least marked in some way.

No reason to disagree with lifter or piston slap, but you are there hearing it and not us. Running could cost big bucks, but you know that. I'd be tempted to begin disassembly now and check clearances, etc as you go, especially if you have an idea what area the noise is coming from.

Keep us posted.

Take care.

:cool: while valve tapping, and piston slap are both possibilities, there is one other to consider and it is much worse. that is the possibility that you have spun a main bearing, and are getting a rod knock until oil pressure builds up enough to stop it.

get yourself a 4ft length of wooden dowel rod and place one end of it in various areasfrom the top to the bottom of the engine to determine where the noise is coming from. if the bottom of the block then you have a bad bearing, if the middle, then piston slap, if under the valve cover then a valve train noise. one more thing to check, pull the belt to the supercharger, and spin the charger by hand. if the noise occurs, then you have a problem with the charger itself. if you have a rootes type blower, make sure the bolts holding it in place are tightened properly and equally, otherwise the rotors can contact each other. seen that happen with a race engine before, and it wasnt pretty.

rbohm,

Very well put, for a FORD guy!

Just kidding on the FORD part, ya know we have to kid you about that.

I personaly am a DODGE person.
But, really enjoy my Camino.

Keep those hints and ideas coming...........................

So this has only started after you have done some mods and was not there before? If that is the case I doubt it to be piston slap or lifter or bearing unless you have got serious contaminants into the engine during the work or really overstressed the engine trying out the performance improvement.

I would be retracing my steps on the mods and discounting those progressively to see if the condition goes away, eg. disconnect the drive belt of the blower like rbohm suggested.

You haven't told us all the mods and work you did before this started. Maybe if you list them we can come up with other suggestions.

rbohm,

Very well put, for a FORD guy!

Just kidding on the FORD part, ya know we have to kid you about that.

I personaly am a DODGE person.
But, really enjoy my Camino.

Keep those hints and ideas coming...........................

:cool: yeah us FORD guys had to learn all the little tricks over the years, because the after market industry was making everything for the "belly button" chevy motors. :lol: :lol:

and now i have one.