Over the last year, my 02 had been losing water. I'd been toping everything off about once a week. Two weeks ago, the temp spiked up and the blinking "Service Engine" light came on. Turns out it had over heated, cracked and warped the heads. Prior to that, the truck ran great.

$1800 later, I had the heads replaced, new radiator and water pump, new plugs and wires.

I picked it up last weekend and immediately noticed a knocking sound I'd never heard before soon after a huffing/scratching type sound that comes on and off.

So I took it back earlier this week and about an hour later got a call saying that I needed a new distributer. The guy I spoke with wasn't aware that I had just had the work done

My question is, if the distributer was bad, why didn't it make any noise prior to it being n the shop?

Thanks.
James

 

The distributor had to come out when the heads were replaced.
Perhaps it got damaged during the repair process. The case/housing is
plastic on these units, so who knows what causes them to go bad.
They certainly aren't too rugged.

Are you being ripped off?
I'd say wait until you get it back, and see if that was the problem.
If something else mysteriously pops up, then yeah, you're being ripped off.

Or, tell the guy thanks for the diagnosis, get the truck back unfixed, and go to Autozone for a $90.00 lifetime gaurantee distributor, and put it in yourself. It's not that difficult to replace.

 

Hey Mike, thanks for that.

Maybe I wasn't clear about the time line.

Blazer ran great until the overheat/heads, took it in for everything to be repaired, got it back and it made the knock from the get go. Took it back to have them look at it again, got a call back after about an hour from a guy who apparently didn't know I had just gotten out of the shop, telling me the dist was bad.

I just went and got it, I'll def be looking into just repairing it myself, I just have a pitman arm also to deal with :/

 

If you had water in your oil from head gasket leak it could be your bearings are bad from no lubrication causing the knocking.

 

is the 4.3 like the 350 where if the dizzy is put back in right then it oil starves the engine? thats what happened with my Suburban.