Summary
See that nice, tight weather seal? It's tempting to pierce it to see if the coil's firing, but there's an easier way. Touch the inductive end of a timing light to it and see if the timing light fires - it should if the coil's working.
The engine mounts were all fine. The bolts were re-torqued to specification just in case, but the noise persisted. The front driveshafts were removed from the hubs, greased thoroughly (including the splines on hub and driveshaft), and then the components were reassembled and installed, making sure to tighten the axle nuts to specification. It won't surprise you to learn that even as a result of our hard work, there was still no change in the noise. Next, we started strategically eliminating systems that could possibly be causing the noise.Another was the "banging noise" described by the customer. Misfires often make their presence known by causing noises, and unfortunately those noises can be mistaken for problems in other systems. A quick way to see if a cylinder is firing on a coil-over-plug system is to touch me inductive clamp of a timing light to the coil with the engine running. If the coil fires, it'll make the timing light flash. This is a useful trick when dealing with a severe misfire or dead hole.The classic signs of a misfire (intermittent problem, strange noise, only under load) were right there if we would have paid attention, and that would have saved us some time. And we were glad that we weren't scared off or led astray by the HV components of the hybrid vehicle. It's not always the high-tech systems that cause the faults.See the full content of this document
Extract
Detective Work
Ignition systems are sneaky little beasts. Diagnosing them correctly can be tough, because components often fail only under certain conditions, or act up intermittently. Off the car, they may look and test out fine but cause problems anyway.
Even worse, ignition system faults will masquerade as noises, transmi...See the full content of this document
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