When i drive my car with the top down and open the throttle, I hear a ticking sound from the engine compartment. I guess it's the injectors. Are they supposed to be a bit loud ?

Also when i open the throttle halfway they make a kind of sputtering sound, an irregular ticking ? Is this normal ?

BTW: did a search on the topic, but could not find anything.

 

Injectors shouldn't make a loud enough noise for you to hear as you are driving down the street. Might be cam chain tensioner.

 

The sound only comes when i open the throttle. If i close the throttle the sound is gone. The sound also changes if i open the throttle more.

Still think it's the cam chain tensioner ?

 

Maybe the valve clearance/tappets need adjusting?

 

This is the reason why I and some of the other long time members here don't respond to "noise" questions anymore. What is "ticking" to you might be something completely different to us. It's all guesswork over the net. We can only tell you what we "think" it might be. Sometimes we're right and sometimes we're not. No matter what it is, someone's bound to not believe it anyway and try to second guess, so it becomes a useless excercise.

The same reason you think it might be injectors (when you open your throttle) is the same reason I think it could be cam chain tensioner. What happens when you open your throttle? Your engine tries to rev up. What happens when the engine revs up? "Timing" changes. More load is placed on the engine and its parts. The tensioner gets more action.

You have to take some responsibility to diagnose this. Go out and listen to the engine with a mechanics stethoscope (or just go and listen) and find out where the sound is coming from. If it's injectors, you'll know right away. If it's the tensioner, you'll also know right away. It will be obvious as the sound will come from two different places. And who knows, maybe it will neither.

Maybe your engine's bottom end is about to grenade. Bad bearings will produce some sort of tapping noise, too.