Ticking Noise At Acceleration?

Can Anyone Shed Some Light On This Issue? I Have A 2000 Mercury Mountaineer Awd 5.0l V-8 With Aprox 60,xxx Miles. When I Accelerate To About 3,000 Rpm's, I Can Hear A Mild Ticking Noise Coming From The Engine. The Ticking Only Occurs When Accelerating And Gets Louder As The Rpm's Go Up. It Sounds Similar To An Engine With Low Oil Levels. I Opened The Hood And Had My Wife Accelerate The Engine. From What I Could Hear, It Sounds Like The Noise Is Coming From The Backside Of The Motor Near The Firewall. I Can't Seem To Pin-point It. All The Fluids Are Topped Off And I Even Added Some Oil Conditioner With No Change. Could This Be A Vaccumm Leak? In The Past Month, I Replaced The Spark Plugs, Pcv Valve, Air Filter, Oil And Had The Tranny Serviced.

After a head splitting hour under the hood I was about to give up when in the last minute, I grabbed onto a metal one inch corrugated hose that leads from the exhaust manifold up to the EGR mounting block. The house once again is a metal corrugated pipe with sliding couplers on each end. Anyway, the house was disconnected from the EGR mounting block. The EGR and its little rubber house were fine and still connected. Weird!!!! I don’t know how this would have come undone but apparently the sliding coupler had backed off causing a huge air leak and ticking noise. I’m happy to report that the ticking noise is gone.

PS. I did not visually notice the problem until I shook the hose. The hose actually looked as if it were connected.



AG - Illinois