Tapping on acceleration

Hi

when i start her up (1.8 campaign) she is fine.  As soon as i get going and start accelerating i am getting a tapping noise from the engine bay.  The harder i accelerate the louder it gets (and more frequent as revs increase).  the noise will then be there on tick over but dies down after a time of no acceleration.

The car still pulls well, in fact performance does not seem to have changed at all.  

The tapping sound leads me to think it is the tappets?

It recently had a once over in a garage (guy i bought it from offered) and they replaced the sump plug and a gear linkage as well as servicing..

Any ideas guys?

Thanks!

CV joint maybe? does the noise get quieter when you put the clutch in my 1600 did this turned out to be cv joint.

No - the noise seems to be dictated by how hard i accelerate.

The harder the engine works the louder it gets.  It does get really quite loud.  Noise seems to be coming from the top of the engine at the back.

If i knew my arse from my elbow when it came to engines i could tell you exactly - the bit above the manifold on top of the engine (is that the air inlet?)

Is it far fetched to think it could be the manifold blowing?

Sounds like pinking/knocking? Are you using 98 RON or higher octane rating fuel? Have you checked the ignition timing? Does it go away if you temporarily retard the timing?

I have a similar thing but assumed it was the tappets. I can only really hear it when I drive past a wall or something for the sound to bounce off. Always use Optimax and am fairly happy that the timing is ok. It's due for a cambelt change so will get that done and let you know if it sorts mine out.

Not enough oil getting up top when you accelerate?  :dontknow:

don't know I'm not aware of having an oil pressure problem It's never lower than 2 bar when over 2000 rpm although I have seen people on here saying there's is over 5 bar. I just assumed their gauges were faulty as this seems like very high pressure for a mk1. Does anyone know what it should be?

Hi. I'm hearing a slight tapping noise in my engine too. Just wondering if you managed to resolve the problem, and how?

Many thanks   8)