'00 Duratec med. pitch rapid pulsating noise, DRIVER's side

[Banjoman10]

Yr. 2000 Duratec, 80,000mi. Pulsating, sort of/kind of metal-to-metal noise but somehow not as quite grating or nasty, on DRIVER's side. In idle it's medium pitch. It's not a belt noise or water pump or whatever else is on the other side of the block. Right from cold start-up, in idle, in park or neutral, warming-up makes no difference. Pitch and frequency increases with engine RPM. Per the wife, it has beeen getting progresively worse in a few months, she didn't say anything til recently. Noise stops completely if put into D or R - in idle. With brake on, if RPM increased to 1000-1100 either in D or R, car still motionless, still no noise. However, in regular street driving it's on continuously, elevated to a high pitch whine as the rpm increases. Worse in acceleration - it seems. It appears to come from, or direction of the torque converter housing. Tranny othewise works and is just fine, like when it was new. Any ideas before the Ford dealer bankrupts me? Thank you for whatever direction or idea you can give me.

[mwt878991]

Hopefully its not tranny related.

Could it be the idler pulley or the tensioner pulley?

Migt be some things to check as they increase speed with the motor


Mike

[Banjoman10]

Trolling thru hundreds of postings on this and other bulletin boards it came up somewhere, that it could be most likely the tranny's fliud pump which causes the whine. The whine goes away completely in deceleration mode, and lessens considerably in intensity after warming up, but seems more related to the warming-up of the transmission than the engine (i.e. it takes longer).

The cause could be a clogged filter, and the proposed solution is to drop the pan, and replace the filter. It worked in that particular (posted) instance. This procedure has never been done on this car, only fluid changes were made.

If this works (or not) I'll post the result.

[Banjoman10]

Converter related for sure, transmission side. Changing filter and fluid didn't work.