My 7.3l has 190000 miles on it.Its is making noise at the flywheel.Ive checked the flywheel for damage and clearance from the starter.Looks good.Any suggestions??

 

Does it sound like it has marbles rolling around while its idleing?

 

Is your truck a manual or an auto?

It could be a cracked flywheel (Flexplate) or torque converter (marbles rolling around from the above post) if an auto.

If it is a manual it could be the pressure plate has had a few failures.

 

It is an auto. It sounds somewhat like marbles. It goes away once the done rise. Once it idiles the sound comes back. Sound to me like a bad bearing. But I'm not sure which has a bearing. Trans or the engine.

 

Once the rpms rise

 

That is a classic problem the early trucks had with the torque converters.

 

what is the best way to determine if its the torque converter.i removed the inspection cover this morning and the pitch of the noise was pretty intense.with the cover on it quiets down quite a bit

 

You can try putting it in gear and bringing the RPM's up while holding the brake. It may quiet down once you load the TC up. Not really any other tests to do on this. Do a web search and you should find lots of posts on TC's sounding like marbles in a tin can.

 

It does quiet down once the TC is loaded up.as soon as i come to a stop sign or slow down it comes back.

 

Yep, noisy TC. Both of my 99's had em. It won't effect driveability, mine rattled for over a year before I replaced it. It should also quiet down when the TC locks in third gear.

 

i bought this truck as a repairable and am ready to put it back on the road.But have been leary of the noise.My last 2 trucks were an 02' with a 7.3 and an 06 with a 6.0 neither of them were noisy so I have been alittle gun shy.Sounds to me like its more of a annoying noise than a problematic issue.

 

I just had a flexplate crack on a '97 it was making noise like a waterpump going out. The only sign that pointed to it being the flexplate was a rust colored dust coming out from where the flexplate bolts to the crank.

 

As already stated, it is the TC. Mine rattled for several years before I got tired of it and replaced it with a later model and now, it's nice and quite.

 

thanks everyone for the input.