What is the difference between the regular pontiac sunfire and the sunfire GT?

1998 pontiac sunfire gt ticking and grinding noise.?

• i have a 1998 pontiac sunfire gt. there is a grinding noise coming from the engine and i have no idea what it is. when the car is idling you can hear a ticking sound and if you try to ...show more

• Answer:

  Is this a 2.4L engine? If so, they are pretty known for having a noisy timing chain. It will make subtle ticking noises at idle even when healthy. But it isn't real loud. The difficulty starting and poor acceleration could be any number of things with the engine or sensor controls, but the way you describe how it starts sounds like ignition or valve timing. I'm sure you don't have adjustable ignition timing but if plug wires have been messed with make sure they're in the right order. If the timing chain jumped a tooth it might do this. But I don't know what would cause the grinding noise you hear. Maybe something has come apart in the valvetrain and is getting wrecked, but that's just a guess.