Ticking/clicking when accelerating 1997 Dodge Caravan

Question

My caravan began ticking when accelerating yesterday. It ticks fairly loudly when accelerating and much softer and slower when idle, or slowing down. Ticks slow and steady when idle or in park. Does not start until I reach the highway usually.

• History

Well over 200,000 miles. Had a new transmission installed a month or two ago but didn't even need it turned out to be a speed sensor but thats a whole different clusterfu*k. Has plenty of coolant, actually coolant never seems to lower always super full. Oil is hard to read, i'm not used to the oil stick on this van it's new to me. One of those bent up ones. I feel like I never get accurate reads. However I top off oil every so often because my wife drives it a half hour every day for work. She told me of the noise yesterday, I topped off half a quart today, no change. I saw today it was dripping oil slowly. Normal black color not the biggest puddle ever. We also just drove from Denver, CO to Salem, OR in the van. But no issues like this until yesterday. Please any help or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

It could be that it's just getting worn out. Something you can check is to see if the exhaust is leaking around the manifolds ... look for black suet on the heads right at the exhaust manifolds. New manifold gaskets will fix this if it's actually the issue. This problem can actually affect the gas mileage as you will be sucking in oxygen at the leaks which confuses the O2 sensors into telling the computer to dump more fuel (it reads a false lean condition).