# Grinding noise when accelerating/engine misfiring



## B14SENTRA96 (Sep 5, 2018)

I have a 96 Sentra 1.6L GA16DE (201,000 miles). Yesterday my car was running normally and when I went to drive it after it sat a couple hours a very loud grinding noise occurred when I would try to accelerate from a stop. As soon as I pushed more than a 1/4 way down on the gas pedal the grinding noise began and when I was in neutral wasn’t present. I let the car sit a couple more hours and it ran completely fine and drove normally after. Today engine is misfiring and running on only 1 cylinder so I did an oil change and reset the ignition timing. Now car runs normal again. Clueless as to what I should do at this point. Distributor was replaced with new one a year ago and last week I replaced the cap and rotor.


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## B14SENTRA96 (Sep 5, 2018)

Forgot to mention that 2 days ago my car was very noisy and after checking my timing I noticed it was a whopping 10 or more degrees off, probably around 25 or 30 degrees btdc, so I set it back to 8 degrees btdc and car was normal after that. Distributor bolts were tight so I know it didn’t move.


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## smj999smj (Jan 1, 2006)

Any noise from the timing chain area? It's not uncommon for these engines to have the guide face on the upper chain tensioner get loose or fall off, which can cause the timing chain to jump timing or worse. I used to replace the tensioner around 100,000 miles as "preventative maintenance."


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## B14SENTRA96 (Sep 5, 2018)

Lots of noise the last time I drove the car about a week ago. Since then I figured out the idler sprocket was horribly worn, which I think caused my jump in timing, also my upper tensioner was falling apart even though it’s been replaced in the last 50,000 miles. Aside from that I found that the rest of the timing chain components had normal amounts of wear for the age of my Sentra. Got a timing chain kit and began replacing parts today including the water pump, drive belts and thermostat. This is a hell of a job to get done in two days for me but I will post how things turn out.


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## B14SENTRA96 (Sep 5, 2018)

Ended up finishing the project Sunday night but couldn’t get it to start, although it acted like it wanted to turn over. Inspected the distributor and found out that the end of the shaft where it connects to the exhaust camshaft was damaged, probably from my jump in timing. Ordered a new distributor and hopefully that will get it to start tomorrow night when it arrives.


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