Duratech 2.5 rattling from front of Engine

[98SVT_290_of_6535]

Newbie here looking for some help...

My wife and I bought our SVT in May of '97 right off the truck. We had an order for a Black model but when the Salesman said he had a Silver (the first one in the area) we came down to look and we had to have it. So over 10 years later (81k miles) we want to take care of some nagging problems -

#1 - Rattling in engine area when engine is under load (slight grade - parking garage) slow speed, light throttle. It can idle and you won't hear it. Only when under load is this noticeable. Parking garages are great because you can really get the sound to kick back and hear the problem. I worked for Nissan for three years and the old Maxima SE's has VTC's that made a racket but usually this was associated with cold starts and usually went away and was purely an annoying sound. Could timing chain tensioners be the culprit here. Everytime a dealer has looked at it, you get the same response..."Could not reproduce the problem." It has a bit of the same rattle noise immediatley during cold start up. If I had to guess I would say it's at the front of the motor (timing chain).

Any suggestions would be helpful.

[beyondloadedSE]

Have you put your head underneath the hood and tried to pinpoint the direction of where the sound is coming from? Rev it from the throttle body and see if you can replicated the noise. The location of the rattle (bottom end, top end, side, etc) will probably help diagnose the problem.