Knock Knock

When did this start? You have owned the car for years? What have you investigated so far? When you drive the car down the driveway, does load, or coast affect it? Only knock when idling?
 
Started it up to pull back in the garage and heard the knock. Pulled it in and proceeded to use a 1” wood dowel rod to listen and find the noise (old trick my dad taught me). Seems like the majority of the noise was coming from th starter area.
 
Pull the starter & check for damaged spring or spring bolt, condition of the bendix drive, and trueness of the shaft. Run a bench test on it by attaching jumper cables and watch for wobble. While you have it off, turn the engine by hand and observe the flywheel gear to ascertain any chipped, broken, or missing teeth. If all this seems good, I don’t know what else I’d check.

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Kinda sorta sounds like the stater drive is hitting the ring gear. Just remove the starter and take a look. While its out check that the ring gear hasn't walked and is in place.
 
Fred F. Griffin said:
It is an AR flywheel. WHat do you mean by “walked”?
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The ring gear can move over the years and might not be against the flange as it should. Once the starter is out just take a look as you turn the engine over to get a good look at the full diameter of the flywheel. If it's 'walked' you'll see a gap. If thats happened the wheel can be driven/tapped back into place and staked. The engine can be turn over using a screwdriver/prybar thru the starter hole against the ring gear.
 
Remove the starter and start it using the hand crank. If the noise is gone you've narrowed down the possibilities.
 
Pulling a Model A starter is not so bad, pretty easy actually in the big scheme of things. Another thing to check is starter mounting bolts being too long, but I presume if that was the case you would have heard it long before now.
 
Take one of the cables off the battery before removing the starter.
When removing the starter, remove one bolt, replace it with a headless bolt. Then remove the other 2 bolts. When reinstalling the starter the headless bolt helps to hold the starter in place while you re-install the other 2 bolts.
 
Fred F. Griffin said:
What does “staked” mean? In one of the replies. Thanks!
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Staking is using a sharp punch to displace metal to make something fit tighter. For example, if one had a nut that was a loose fit on a bolt or stud, taking a hammer and a sharp punch and punching a bunch of divots on one side of the nut, close to the threads.
Another example would be on a starter or generator, where the flat head bolts holding the field poles in place there is no lock washer. Sometimes the metal around the head of the bolt is staked (using a sharp punch, displacing some of the body metal) to "lock" the bolt in place.

Hope this makes sense.
 
Took starter out and found that the flywheel ring gear was walking out. The starter pinion gear was worn and not meshing with the ring gear. It was hammering the gear off. Kept turning the flywheel with the crank and lightly taping it back tight. Then I will stake it to the flywheel next. Wish me luck and thanks for the ideas!
 
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