318ic intake noise

1997 318ic that started making a horrible grinding, screeching noise. It sounds like it's coming from the intake manifold. Does anybody have any idea what could be causing this awful sound? It started after a very short trip to the store, shut car off, went in, restarted, and then it started making the noise. It increased in volume every time we drove the car yesterday. Now we're afraid to drive the car, please help, any thoughts at all would be appreciated.:1zhelp:

sounds like timing chain tensioner

Thank you for that suggestion, I'll check that when I'm under the hood. It was also suggested I my have a bad crankcase breather valve. From what I understand, it's a diaphragm assembly mounted under the intake manifold. Hopefully, that will be my problem, it's a lot cheaper, and easier, to repair.:iceslolan

Quick update, it's not the crankcase breather valve or timing chain tensioner. It sounds like the starter huffed itself, possibly a stuck selonoid. The engine is running beautifully, rock steady idle, good power, smooth as silk. I relieved the fuel pressure and pulled the fuel pump fuse and turned it over, the car sounds awful, that leads me to the starter or some component associated with that system. I'll post regular updates, in the process of taking off the intake manifold, appears to be the easiest way to get to the starter. Plus, with 70,000+ miles, figured I'd check all the vacuum hoses and give the intake a good cleaning. Kill as many birds with one stone as possible.

Quick follow up, got the car torn apart, you have to remove the entire intake to get to the top starter bolt, which by the way is an E12 torx bolt. It was the starter, the bendix went bad and wasn't coming back all the way rubbing the flywheel. Luckily, only the bendix was damaged, and the flywheel is fine. A word of advice, if all you have is a basic set of tools, don't attempt this job. I work part time as a tech and used tools I haven't used in years to get this job done.

anyone one up for 'flogging' some BMW 'engineers' ?

I think I have the same problem but it only does it intermittently. 93 318i

I hate the BMW engineers too. I tried that on old BMW cars and it gets even better when you have too deal with a thick layer of dirt, and frozen/broken rusted bolts. The only good thing about them is that back then they made some nice and thick gaskets. Also when i open up a BMW engines I find too many damaged and stripped bolts-dumb peole just overtorque in aluminium parts. So I gave it up and got myself a classic american driver-cant be simpler-buletproof.