This week we had a clattery 948 come to visit. It’s somewhat routine for 948s in particular to make a bunch of extra noises (particularly in comparison to 1275s) but this one in particular was a bit outside the norm… So we dug a little further. You can see the video below of the clatter that prompted us to investigate.
If you are new to these cars, valve train clatter is somewhat common. There is some ticking present in the video above, but see if you can hear the louder underlying clatter in the video. This is what prompted us to lift the engine and remove the front timing cover so we could dig deeper.
With the cover off, we were impressed to see the gears and chain were very badly worn. If you look closely at the pictures below, you can see the teeth are starting to hook and there’s wear out on the tips of the cogs. Moreover, the troughs in the gears are elongated, and the chain is also worn on all the rollers. It’s difficult to tell from the photos, but basically you have chain stretch and wear, deepening and elongated cog depressions, and slapping into those little grooves, all of which was making the cacophony that prompted our repair.
This was one of the more worn-out timing gear sets we had seen before on any Bugeye. As such, this was a wonderful opportunity to install one of our dual timing chain kits. In this case, you’ll see that where one row of chain was adequate, two rows of chain is probably overkill; but given the wear that we saw on the single row set-up, clearly something new was needed.
Check out the video below after this upgrade. All the chain noise is gone and the engine sounds healthy once again! (it’s the same engine, just looks a little different with K and N filters installed).
If you have a 948 engine that’s noisy, this is an upgrade worth looking into. It’s not a difficult job to do, and it produced pleasant results for this particular customer.
Let us pick-up your car and fix this sort of issue (or anything else) for you (anywhere in America), or you can purchase our dual row timing chain kit below and do it yourself! Click the photo to order! This is one more great way to make your 948 engine last!
