95 le sabre knocking noise

My belt tensioner is jumping around making a knoking noise.I replaced tensioner still making the same noise.Could the water pump be the problem even though it is not leaking or over heating orthe A.C comp. going out any help would be greatly appreciated ???

You may want to look at the harmonic balancer. I have seen water pumps go bad and knock without leaking, but not on the gm 3.8. I have replaced a few harmonic balancers. The rubber detererorates and outside of the pulley seperates from the inside, and when this happens it starts knocking.

thanks for the the reply.I checked the Harmonic Balancer & that is it.So I called on a new one & was told I needed to know if it's MFI or SFI. How am I supposed to determine if its Multi or Sequential?the parts store couldn't help.Any help would be appreciated I will post that ? :confused:

I need to determine if my car is Multi Fuel Injected or Sequential Fuel Injected in order to purhase a Harmonic Balancer for a 95 Le Sabre :dunno:

First you need to know which engine you have... Being a 95 LeSabre you should have the L27 3800 Tuned Port Injection engine( Vin L ).. I don't care what the books say or what the Parts person says... All 3800 engines are SFI

Just like I answered in the other post, all of the 3800's are SFI:)

Thanks JRS 3800 I have the VIN.#1G4HP52L7SH474918 could you help me out with this,just to make sure

You have the SFI , vin "L", eigth character from the left in the vin.as stated by jrs 3800 The MFI system is in the vin "C" & "K" 3800. The only difference between the two that I know of is the timing by which the injectors are fired.

Thank you discnik I really appreciate it.:smile:

Let me get a little deeper into this.... The Vin C is listed as MFI... and I have seen the series II listed as MFI and SFI... the 3800 series II is SFI...

I don't know why there are listings for MFI on NA 3800's as they all ran the SFI system... None of these did batch fire in any means, even when they lost the Cam sensor signal they still fired in SFI mode, fuel timing would be off but the system was still running SFI..

The Vin C, Vin L and Vin K all uaed the Cam sensor for #1 TDC used for True SFI... all of these use the same 18x pattern and the Cam sensor for #1 TDC... all of these fire the injectors individually as the PCM has individual drivers for each injector..

This is why even the Old school 3800 Vin C 88-91 could do 27-33 MPG Depending on gearing... The in L and Vin K are also close to these numbers... This is partly due to the SFI system that they share...

And example would be the old chevy 60* 3.1 V6, this was an MFI engine and IIRC it used batch fire.. On the 94+ 3100's they used the 7 x's pulse crank sensor on the side of the block and the 24x's pulse crank sensor on the front behind the balancer.. These engines used SFI, the 3400 used the same system as the 3100... These are SFI and each injector has its own driver..

So yes the L27 is a true SFI engine... Them asking that question is stupid in my eyes as there is only one balancer for the Vin L 3800.. and it will not work on the Vin K 3800 series II... Just makes no sense to me that they would even ask that...

Actually, the pre-1988 3800s were not all SFI. However, before that time, most of us called them "231s" and not "3800s" or "3.8s" like the latest trend seems to be.

Further, the "Fast Start" system 231s would revert to batch-fire if the CMP signal was lost, and actually start in batch-fire until the CMP signal was established, whereas the older (non-"fast start") EFI systems wouldn't even start without a CMP signal. I guess that's another difference between the "231" and the "3800" engines.

The metric-isation of our society has not all been positive. As many of you engineers may remember from your lectures and labs, NOTHING metric has ever been to the moon and back.

Thats agreed.. The newer systems can drop the cam signal and still run ok.. It will not be true SFI mode as the Fuel timing will be off a bit, but the 3800's don't revert to batch fire when this happens..

All 3800's 88-Current are SFI..