My '02 Accord suddenly started making an awful racket when I start it up. the sound is persistent from start-up, does not go away when the engine is warm and gets faster and louder if I put the car in gear and tap the gas.

It sounds like a "clicking-clacking" noise with a slight sound of ringing, like metal on metal. The mechanic said that he thinks a piston is hitting the top of the block. I'm not very adept at car analysis, but the engine runs steady, no jumping around in RPMs and i would think the engine would not run at all or be burning smoke or other fluids, if one of the cylinders was that badly damaged.

Does this problem sound familiar to anyone? I'm new to this whole thing with Accord engines, so any help would be appreciated. Thank you very much!

 

maybe need valve adjustment

 

My mothers grand am gt did this as well... First time, it had a bad rod, ran no different, just made a horrible racketing sound that increased with the rpms... We swapped out the motor with a brand new one, and at about 45k on the new motor, the same sound arrose... But this time, it was the valves... Adjusted, and there we went... Another 30k untill the second motor blew... Gotta love the gm 3.4l v6...Lol..

 

So I finally got the engine to my buddy's garage. We opened it up and found that the timing belt was slack...tensioner died. We took the heads off and it looks like the pistons hit the valves...so I'll be swapping the heads, along with replacing the timing belt, tensioner, and idlers, along with a whole new gasket set. Thanks for the replies and the advice.