I had a Daytona that spent most of a year out in France with a customer of mine. He drove the car near Paris until the Corona Virus hit Europe and the world, so the car came back to the States for me to look her over.

While it was out in Europe, I was told there was a strange noise coming from the valve train, but the mechanics out there couldn’t pinpoint the origin. Unfortunately it was one of those sounds that would have to get worse in order to find it. When I got the car in my possesion, I heard it too but needed a second opinion. 365BTB/4s have both a timing chain and gears to turn the camshafts, and some engines have more gear noise than others and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t gear noise. I asked my mentor Francois to come and take listen to help me find the source of the noise.

The noise would be the loudest when the engine was cold, and would go away when it warmed up, or when the engine was reved a little bit. We used a stethoscope to listen to different areas of the engine and Francois soon found the area by timing chain case making the most noise. Behind this plate on the engine, was a bearing that is part of the timing chain assembly, and was probably the source of the noise. Unfortunately, to access this bearing, the timing chain case will have to come off, which means the engine has to come out!

The engine is running strong, so hopefully it will just be a replacement of a couple of bearings and the car will be back on the road. I’ll just need to find some time to do the work!