Noisy 290 Kawasaki golf cart engine

[Crack]

I'm not as smart as most of these guys on here but could it be a weld came loose on the exhaust somewhere it dose have that sheild on his? Again just tossing out ideas of any kind

[nobuckbuild]

my best guess from what i hear is the rod is going bad and causing some piston slap in the cylinder , i would be pulling that engine before it destroys itself

[mrlmd]

And how does a connecting rod go bad? That is a pretty stout piece of metal.
This does not sound like a bearing noise, it is a ticking or knocking or metal-on-metal vibrating noise.

[Malibu-addict]

Kinda sounds like my FE350 did before rebuilding it. It was the internal balancer that had come loose. Flopping around in there also did more damage so you should fix ASAP if it is internal.

[mrlmd]

The head mechanic at the local shop that does cart repairs and sales says it may be a carboned exhaust valve making that noise, from the lousy gas they sell here and somewhat from a lack of use for a short period of time. That would necessitate removing the head and valve assembly and cleaning it if that were the case. And BTW, if I wanted to buy a new (rebuilt) engine with a 2 year warranty, they sell them for $869, other than maybe a $200-250 repair bill if he took mine apart to clean and reseat the valves, with no guarantee that's the problem until he took it apart to look at it. Since my cart runs so well now, is just loud, I'm going to keep running it until it craps out, which may never happen. I have to take a closer look at my rusted exhaust system again to see if this noise is possibly coming from that altho it doesn't sound like an exhaust leak.

[compmikey]

if you ever find a definitive cause please let us know. Thanks, Mike v

[Teresa]

I have this noise now. Did you ever find the cause or is it still running fine. Thanks

[CP241]

That’s the unmistakable noise of the counterbalance weight link rods.

In the FE290 the bushings/bearings are replaceable. They’re cheap, see my sticky “fe290 rebuild” for the part numbers on one of the last pages. M

You’ll need a press to remove the gear in the front of the crankshaft to get to tue front link rod but they’re easy to replace.

Replace them now before it gets worse. Cause “worse” happens quickly and results in a big hole in the back of the block when they let loose and the counterbalance weight has itself a party.