steventux
New Member
My 55 plate 109 CDI has had a rattle since I bought it 6 months ago there was 83k on the clock when I bought it with service history to back that. I've serviced it and had 3000 trouble free miles from it, it doesn't smoke or drink oil, fuel consumption is good and it starts fine and pulls well.
I've also inspected the injectors for leaks and there's no noticeable black gunk building up. It's also had a new flywheel and clutch by a trustworthy mechanic in the past year.
At around 2000rpm (and more so when in gear than in neutral) a metallic and fairly harsh rattle cuts in and continues till I get to 3000rpm which makes for some noisy medium speed journeys.
Over the past 3k miles the symptoms have got slightly worse.
Accelerating hard reduces the rattle, it's barely audible if I put my foot down, also inclines tend to reduce the noise. At first I thought it might be a loose heat shield but when driving in a tunnel or close to a wall you can hear (through all gears) the noise coming from the front of the vehicle. It is also noticeable when in neutral just not nearly as much (seems to come and go between 2000rpm and 2250rpm). Depressing the clutch for a gear change in the rattle-rev-range makes the noise change in sound like something is suddenly spinning faster but that just might be my fertile imagination.
I'm hoping this might be something poly-belt related like a pulley, I've read that the clutch pulley can make quite a racket but it's the preciseness of when the noise occurs that makes me wonder why it only occurs on the 2000rpm mark so consistently.
I'll do the alternator pulley as it's an advised replacement at 100k but has anyone had a similar specific engine / drivetrain noise, any MB mechanics or frequent Vito maintainers had similar and diagnosed successfully?
I've also inspected the injectors for leaks and there's no noticeable black gunk building up. It's also had a new flywheel and clutch by a trustworthy mechanic in the past year.
At around 2000rpm (and more so when in gear than in neutral) a metallic and fairly harsh rattle cuts in and continues till I get to 3000rpm which makes for some noisy medium speed journeys.
Over the past 3k miles the symptoms have got slightly worse.
Accelerating hard reduces the rattle, it's barely audible if I put my foot down, also inclines tend to reduce the noise. At first I thought it might be a loose heat shield but when driving in a tunnel or close to a wall you can hear (through all gears) the noise coming from the front of the vehicle. It is also noticeable when in neutral just not nearly as much (seems to come and go between 2000rpm and 2250rpm). Depressing the clutch for a gear change in the rattle-rev-range makes the noise change in sound like something is suddenly spinning faster but that just might be my fertile imagination.
I'm hoping this might be something poly-belt related like a pulley, I've read that the clutch pulley can make quite a racket but it's the preciseness of when the noise occurs that makes me wonder why it only occurs on the 2000rpm mark so consistently.
I'll do the alternator pulley as it's an advised replacement at 100k but has anyone had a similar specific engine / drivetrain noise, any MB mechanics or frequent Vito maintainers had similar and diagnosed successfully?
It strikes me that 83k seems rather early to need a clutch.??
It was indeed a lot quieter when revving with the belt off, the dummy pulley where the aircon unit would be has some play and has a bit of a rattle to it, I took this off and it doesn't appear to have an internal bearing... does that sound right? How do I service this?
