This car has 194K miles and I'm new to working on them. The car had had a "rattle" when starting and idling and sounded like the torque converter or exhaust rattle. But Sat. night I got off the freeway and tried to get on it a bit and no power! 15psi of boost and no zoom. Drove the car 11 miles back home (had to) and "rattle" got worse and it even has an occasional scraping sound. Shop said it sounded like a throne rod because the noise wouldn't change when in gear. Any ideas? Is it time for a rebuild? Oh yeah, never been rebuilt. Let me know.
You can remove the oil pan without removing the engine from the engine compartment. All you have to do is remove the exhaust crossover and then start removing the oil pan bolts. You also have to remove the nuts holding the ground wire loom to the timing cover. But before you take look at the bottom end of the engine, you may try removing the serpentine belt and starting your engine up momentarily to check if there is an accessory pulley or accessory that is binding. The first clue that I had when the bottom end of my engine went, was when I removed the oil filler tube and noticed there was no oil draining from the lifters (cuz #1 rod bearing spun)