I stopped by my buddies dealership again today to give his S4 another look before buying it. I started the car and everything seemed normal, I popped the hood, got out of the car and the motor sounded find until I opened the hood. There was a very noticeable tapping or clacking noise coming from the intake manifold. I dont know if it was noisy valves or noise from the timing chain. It seemed like it was coming from dead center of the manifold which didnt make sense for it to be the timing chain but I thought I would throw it out there. This is the first B6 S4 motor I have ever heard with the hood popped. Do they normally have noisy valves? The car has 94000K on it, I checked the oil and it was at the right level. Also the silver paint was bubbling up on the valve cover, is there a sign of anything? Another thing I noticed was the thermostat didnt move at all in the 10 minutes it sat idling but it did go up to the normal temperature after a couple minutes of driving. Is this a sign that the car needs a new thermostat or is this normal?

 

None of that stuff sounds normal to me, but I've only got 60K on mine.