Gave the Octy a bit of a blast last night then pulled up to a cashpoint and noticed it was ticking quite loudly.

I got the bonnet up and managed to narrow down the loud ticking noise to the charcoal cannister (which I understand is a normal noise but annoying anyway ) but there is also a quieter ticking noise which seems to be coming from the front of the engine.

I checked it again this morning and the charcoal cannister wasn't ticking but there was still a ticking noise from the front of the engine. The oil level is ok (although oil is very black, it is getting changed soon), the sound seems to be coming from the fuel rail or the injectors.

Is this normal? It's going in for a main dealer service soon so I could ask them to have a look at it if it shouldn't be doing that.

Is this not just the engine cooling down (meaning the metal has expanded with the heat and now cooling and shrinking again so it makes a ticking noise)?

Phil

I'd imagine it's just the injectors operating normally.

Put your finger on them and you can feel the pulses in sync with the noise.

Its always easier to locate a noise with feel, or listening to the end of a long screwdriver which is pushed onto suspect components.

The AUQ is a very noisy engine though! It never sounds right!

I checked it this morning about 2 minutes after I started it so wouldn't have thought it was cooling down.

I'm going to try taking the cover off and refitting it tonight as I took it off a while back to steam clean the rocker cover and not sure if I trapped something when I put it back on...

Bodge - will check the injectors while the covers off.

Does sound like injectors as bodge has said. They are quite loud tbh as is the charchol filter thing.

ticking from around the injectors is normal. HTH