Hey it's me again, this time with a different issue. I'll get straight to it, under light load or no load e.g. in-gear downhill the car is making a weird grinding/vibrating noise from the engine. If the engine is under load then the noise stops until I release from the throttle.

Some background on the car:
2007 1.2 8v 65bhp 5 door
92/93k miles on the clock, engine oil and filters done at 90k
No service history, don't know when cam belt was done or anything.
Just over a month ago I had a rattling suspension issue sorted out on front driver side.

The noise first started on a long trip, just did 100 miles of continuous motorway driving and did 20 or so miles on country roads. Got to a roundabout and had to really hammer it to get out and since then I've had this noise. I rarely rev the engine to that extent, 4k is usually my limit but I went way past that. On the return journey it didn't make a noise until I put my foot down again on the same roundabout, again only noticeable when I got upto speed and let off the throttle.

Now it just does it from the moment I start up the car, even on cold starts. I'll try and pick it up on camera, but my dash cam is struggling to hear it.

This video is from a while ago, but shows the issue when the car is upto speed. It is not picked up very well because at the time my window wouldn't close, another thing that had to be fixed at the time haha.

[ame]https://youtu.be/rzwS6vy-pUM[/ame]

From 1:00, again it's not very evident in the video but was louder in person. It stops as soon as I put the engine under load again going up hill. I'll try and get another video, or stick a microphone in the car somehow in the next week.

As of now though, any thoughts on what it could be? Any recommendations are much appreciated.

Kind Regards,
Phill

The airbox could have worked loose, check the rubber bung on the end of the pipe that can make a right rattling noise.

If you really had to rev it up the engine vibration could've knocked something loose.

Get under the bonnet and have a good look around try it with the engine running too, see if you can narrow down where it's coming from.

Report back on any findings.

TigerTom said:

The airbox could have worked loose, check the rubber bung on the end of the pipe that can make a right rattling noise.

If you really had to rev it up the engine vibration could've knocked something loose.

Get under the bonnet and have a good look around try it with the engine running too, see if you can narrow down where it's coming from.

Report back on any findings.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply, I'll check that as I haven't taken the airbox off since replacing the breather hose earlier in the year. I'll report back tomorrow.

Hey, so apologies on my late reply. I asked someone who has a grande punto like mine and he said to move the dip stick and see what happens, to my surprise it actually stopped the noises. What an odd solution.

These sort of noises can be quite extraordinarily difficult to find. My last car - 1999 SEAT Cordoba estate 1.9 TDI, which I bought at 18 months old and kept 'till two years ago - developed a strange metallic rattle which only happened at moderate revs with quite large throttle openings. It could not be reproduced unless the car was actually being driven. It took me almost two years, on and off, to find it was a threaded insert in the inner wing, underneath the turbo pipe from the intercooler to the engine, into which the pipe's steady bracket was fixed. The insert would fret against the wing when the engine torqued over against its mountings. The subtle thing was that because it was the insert being loose in the wing it didn't make any difference that the bolt holding the bracket was as tight as you like. I sorted it just before one of our jaunts to Mrs Jock's sister in Devon. I spent most of the journey feeling so pleased with myself! I remember Mrs Jock actually asking what I was smiling about all the time!

The Imaginative Lad said:

Hey, so apologies on my late reply. I asked someone who has a grande punto like mine and he said to move the dip stick and see what happens, to my surprise it actually stopped the noises. What an odd solution.

Click to expand...

Ha I was just reading this thread and had the same idea! Had that problem on mine but intermittent. Had to play over a few weeks bending the dipstick slightly. Got it right in the end

Well done finding the fix

Yeah it was one of those odd things that you would never find on your own, I even moved the dipstick before to check my oil and it didn't occur to me at all that noise stopped for a while and came back eventually.

I suspect it rattles against the sump somehow which is weird!