So today I insured my 79 305 camaro and brought it out to drive. When I started it in my driveway it runs good in park at idle. When I put it into drive the car starts knocking real loud. I held my foot on the brake and lightly brought up the idle in drive and the knocking started to go away. The knocking seems to be coming from the front of the car. What could be the problem? Thanks

 

Assuming it didn't do that when you put the car to bed in the fall, I would have to say a good possibly is bad gas from sitting over the winter. Did you put Sta-Bil in the tank when you parked it, and does it sound like an octane knock/ping to begin with? Bite the bullet and fill the tank next time with premium and see if that clears it up.

 

Well actually the car has been regularly started a couple times a week. I drove it regularly earlier this year. After checking it out a little more it seems like the knocking is actually coming from the area between the front of the tranny and the connection to the driveshaft. Im not convinced that its engine knocking... I'll have to put it on some jackstands and check out the connections underneath. Are their any parts in this section of the drivetrain that would commonly fail and produce my loud knocking?

 

That's hard to say without being able to hear it. First I would check your exhaust connections. If you still have stock manifolds, a leaky donut gasket between the manifold and header pipe can make a noise similar to what you're describing. It could also make a sound that would make you think that you have a noisy lifter. Then as the engine warms up, the donut can expand from the heat and either make the noise quieter, or go away all together. If you have headers, check for a leaky collector gasket, it's not uncommon. Usually in my experience though, a leaky header collector gasket would have more of a snapping or rapping sound.
You can also check to make sure your torque converter to flexplate bolts are tight. If those are loose, you'd be getting a nasty sound too.

 

after i put my new tranny in i had a similar thing. is more of a knocking or like a clanking.? cause my was clanking. and what it turned out to be was the starter motor was geting hung up on the fly wheel. i dont know what it decided to go bad right after i did my tranny. but after about of week of trying to diagnose to issue i jacked it up, started it and saw sparks coming from there, also check your torque convert bolts, maybee some how they loosened up a bit. check the real obvious stuff first, so before you invest alot of time and money into the problem, it could be an easy fix. good luck

 

Wooooo EASY FIX!! haha...Turns out the bolts from the flexplate to the converter were not even hand tight! I tightened the three bolts back up and the problem disapeared. Thanks for the help!!

 

Hey you're welcome, glad it was an easy one. Did you happen to look to see if the bolts got hammered at all?

 

alright man thats awesome. anytime you have something like that, do what you did and check for the not so obvious but possible stuff. with cars anything is possible. glad it was an easy fix.

 

The bolts were actually still in good shape. Luckily I didnt run it much with the knocking.