04 Pacifica Low End Clicking at Idle
 

Hi All-

I'm a noob to these forums- but a recent situation brings me in for some advice.

Have an '04 Pacifica with a 3.5- just a spit under a 100k on her. On a recent family vacation, we were climbing up a fairly decent grade, and she just choked out on us and died. Recentl tune up, service, etc filters on her. After letting it cool down some, it would run with a loss of power, and want to choke out when putting any type of load on it.

Needless to say, our trip to Vegas was delayed by a tow to the local dealership. After some diagnosis, and pulling it down to the intake, there sounds almost to the equivalent of a noisy valve click coming from the bottom of the engine that gets louder during acceleration. We had the car shipped home- but I am wondering if anyone has any experience with something like this. I did not go to the lower end diagnostic as it seems that the folks at the dealership in Bakersfield were about as smart as a box of hair.

I am thinking maybe a timing belt tensioner pulley as that might seem characteristic of a loss of power and a low end click. It's definitely not a louder knock like a rod or something.

Any ideas or thoughts would be helpful!

Thanks!
Nate

could it be lifter noise ? I ask because our 04 did the same thing and it turned out to be a piece of one of the cam lobes broke off, at first it wouldn't run but a minute or so, now it will run but ticks like hell...I guess that was the computer not compensating on the timing quick enough. we haven't driven it anywhere but I have had it ideling in the garage for a few minutes to try to pin point where the noise was coming from. a stethescope with a probe on the end is great for this.
hope this helps