WJ 4.7HO Rattle

[JoergM]

Originally Posted by Trav_Patrol

I finally got around to removing the belt and starting it, unfortunately the noise is still there and quite bad.
It's booked in to a Jeep specialist Wednesday next week to have a look at it. I can't help but feel it's going to be bad news... I've had a bad run with used cars this year and this will too it off nicely 😅

I had a donor Jeep (owned by an elderly man) which had same issue. I reckon it is the timing chain rail. I wanted to keep the engine and took it out. Wanted to see the reason for the failure too. Once I opened the cover I saw that the rails where the timing chain is running on are just made of plastic and will fail sooner or later. I am pretty sure this is your problem (see pictures). I reckon you can do it yourself if you up to, but it will be a bit time consuming. you might need to take the entire front apart ideally also remove the radiator so that you have full access. A decent set will be about 200 Dollar from Rockauto.

[Trav_Patrol]

Well for a large variety of reasons it's taken me this long to pull the rocker covers off and have a look, despite the service books being filled etc, and having a seemingly honest elderly owner... She's been seriously mistreated or used cheap oil, I'm not sure... But basically a boat anchor now. I never even got to take it off road once 😅 I'm really unsure where to go next, whether it's worth finding a second hand motor or just cutting my losses and start saving again.

[bluegrommet]

Oh gosh, did they ever change the oil?

[Trav_Patrol]

According to the service book they did... He was the second owner, bought at 60,000. But yeah it doesn't look good...