I've got a nasty noise coming from the front side of the motor which I now have no idea what it is. So naturally I've stopped driving it and I need to get it checked out before I go any farther. I've got no loss of power, so I'm assuming that's good news. Any suggestion on where to take it or if you've done it, what's involved?

 

describe more

 

Kind of hard to describe really. At first I thought something was hitting my fan, then I pulled over to check it out, and the sound appears to be coming from the front side of the motor, under the valve cover. Like I said, no loss of power or anything. I don't hear it as much under load, but when I let off the gas at 3-7k it's pretty obnoxiously loud. Oil level is good, coolant level is good, car feels just fine. Wish I had more to describe it, because I'm not really looking forward to paying for the repair. (71k on the car, never a problem until now)

 

The S2000 has a timing *chain*. I'm sure that's what you meant, right?

The tensioner usually only makes noise at startup, because what happens is the spring inside gets weak. After startup, though, it is mainly powered by oil pressure.

I would pull the valve cover off and inspect the valves.

 

Guess digging a little deeper would have made me sound a bit like less of an idiot. Anyway, nasty little noise - not too happy about it, step one will be pop the valve cover I guess.

 

are the spark plugs tight?

 

Yeah, check that too.

 

with your additional info, it's not the noise i had a couple of times which was the tensioner since mine only happened at start-up... once tensioner replaced, all good. but that sucker failed twice on me.

 

........ only "failed" once on me and I been running on it for the past 30k miles w/o issue (doesn't seem to get much worse once it peaks after a couple months)