C4Expat

I recently brought my car in for a valve adjustment and a replacement of spark plugs. I picked the car up on Friday and drove it last weekend with no trouble. Monday, I started the car and was greeted with a loud pinging sound that seemed to be coming from the fan. I brought the car back to the dealership and they inspected the car without finding anything. They thought it might be a bearing in the alternator going bad?

This weekend the car now has serious power loss/hesitation issues. The can has stalled at idle, and lost complete power on the highway when the engine was over 4,000 RPM. There seems to be no specific RPM or time (hot or cold) when this can happen. It always starts fine. Could a failing alternator cause this? My theory is that they screwed up the O2 sensor when the removed the exhaust in doing the valve job. But that wouldn't explain the earlier pinging sounds. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Mike

Bill Wagner

Any time you hear pinging on a 964 the first thing you should check is the dual distributor belt just to make sure it hasn't broken. By your description, I kind of doubt that that's the problem but who knows, if the belt broke in such a way that the secondary wiper was still a little free to rotate every now and then then it could be the problem.

I think your suggestion about the alternator may be a good one, but you might want to check the battery and all electrical connections (particularly grounds) as well. The electronics in the system are sensitive to voltage drops and when the voltage drops out, things can become erratic. It could, however, be a lot of things.

<img border="0" alt="[cheers]" title="" src="graemlins/beerchug.gif" />

C4Expat

Thanks for the response Bill! It is now back at the dealership and we'll see what they can turn up. I think this may be a case of extreme coinicidence. The best theory so far is the alternator and the timing just happened to be right with the recent service. I will make sure they check the distributor belt.

Cheers,
Mike