Hello,

Car: 2005 Honda Accord EX-V6, Automatic transmission

Since last Sunday, my car has started doing a ticking sound. That's gonna be a weird analogy but bear with me.

If you've ever eaten one of those "Fizz" candy, the noise it makes when it's in your mouth is the exact same noise I can hear from my car.

- It happens when driving at 40 mph and up, intermittently at about 30 seconds intervals

- The pattern of the ticking sound is roughly the same every time I hear it.

- The car is usually parked in a 5 degrees celcius heated garage.

- It only happens in sub-zero temps

- It starts after driving around 10 miles.

- It doesn't matter if I'm coasting, accelerating or braking. The sound will be the same regardless.

- It happens on smooth pavement, so it's not related to bumps or potholes.

- The car drives as usual, no loss of performance, the only indication of a potential issue is the noise itself.

- The sound seems to be coming from under the car, near the center console or shifter.

- The left axle and table were both replaced a month ago.

My guess is there might be ice build up under the car, and contact with heating exaust pipe might be causing the ice to crack or melt, which causes the sound. I'm gonna try heating my garage to 20 degrees celcius tonight to make sure everything is melted tomorrow morning.

If anyone else experienced anything like that before and has other ideas / inputs, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

 

Sometimes the mode/flap actuator in the heater box can act up, the sensors don't pick up the position of the flap correctly and the motor keeps trying to move it. Results in kind of a ticking and sometimes churning noise.

On Toyotas the way to stop the noise is to turn the heat up full for about a minute. The additional heat on the assembly loosens up the sticking part and the noise stops.

At least this is something simple you can try with your car as a first attempt at troubleshooting the problem.

 

I have to agree with jkowtko. If your setting for temp control in the vehicle is in between hot and cold, you could be getting a jittering from the control actuator for the door. This happened to me, would not do it full one way or the other. but in the middle it kept trying to make adjustments. I removed mine, opened up and cleaned contacts, reapplied with new dielectric grease and it works perfectly now. Hope this helps.