www.clandestineresearch.com/whine.mp3

the clunk you hear partway through is me shifting from park to neutral.

I'm trying to figure out what that whine is, everyone I know thought it was the power steering so I added some fluid and it persists. It's been doing this for about two days now. That recording was just in my garage, but when I'm driving it gets very quiet while I'm moving but becomes quite noticeable while sitting at a light. The sound is so pervasive that I can't tell which side of the car it's coming from. It's louder when I'm standing behind the tires with the hood open, and no louder when I'm leaning over the engine than it is when I'm laying on the floor of the garage listening under the car.

I check all of my fluids once a week and the only one I've noticed get lower is the radiator coolant, but it's never made this noise before, it just suddenly started on thursday. I noticed that the bottom of the engine near the sump is wet, but I think that's where the coolant is going as the oil/trans fluid are both at the top of the operational range when I check them.

Because it's louder towards the back of the engine compartment and because it doesn't seem to be louder on one side of the car or the other, I'm leaning in the direction of the transmission. If anyone thinks they can convince me otherwise, please do, I'd rather not have to replace anything under there.

 

As long as you're already leaning in that direction, you might as well fall down, grab some tools, and get under it.

If you suspect an accessory, you can remove the belt and start it again. That will eliminate the water pump, alternator, steering pump, A/C compressor, AIR pump, and whatever else may be connected. None of those seem like they would typically make that kind of noise on failure, however, but it wouldn't take long to check.

Given the audio clip sound, I'd take a wild guess at a trans pump. A TC probably wouldn't make that kind of noise in neutral or park, and it seems obvious by the sound that the parking pawl is engaged (not stripped out of the case), so downstream spline/hub noise is less of a likely cause.

There is hopefully someone else here that has heard that many times before. We'll see if moving it to the correct forum gets the right ears on it.

 

ah yes, thank you for the advice. I know relatively little about transmissions...

I had forgotten completely where I placed this.

 

I believe this was the alternator. I jumped in this morning and drove it for a bit, no noise. guess what hasn't charged at all today?

I believe I verified this by disconnecting the battery cable while the engine was running. my understanding says the alternator should run the engine if there's no battery. Since the engine died immediately when I disconnected the battery, I believe that means the alternator isn't making power.

 

sounds almost like some sort of supercharger

I would go cruising around like that to see what kinda looks you get

 

Thats not terribly good for the alternator. USing a DVM is a much safer way to verify its operation.

Secondly, that would be really loud for an alternator. They usually just squeal when the bearings give out. Id say you should get under the car and locate the noise for sure.

 

I would love to get under there, but the car stopped making the noise when the alternator stopped working, otherwise I'd dive right under it. But it's running just fine right now so I don't really see the need to get dirty.

 

Theres a good chance disconnecting the alternator from the battery may have caused it to stop functioning. That can generate large voltage spikes.

hopefully the noise was nothing, but for me thats usually the time that the car begins to silently conspire to break down at some horribly inconvienient time.

 

indeed. and I am worried about it. but my logic says that since most everything is all original, it's all worn at about the same rate and that throwing new parts in the tranny is just gonna cause problems elsewhere.

that doesn't mean that i don't plan to put in a new tranny and an aluminum 350, just that i don't want to mess with things to much until i am ready.