Troubleshooter: Take some time to listen

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If there’s one vehicle symptom that pesters owners and techs to the same frustrating degree, it has to be noise. Drivers hate them because they don’t provide any indication of how much the cure is going to cost, and (if they’ve had any ownership experience at all) they know it often involves more than one trip to the shop. Techs loathe seeing a noise complaint on their work order assignment because they’re never really sure the problem they tackle is going to solve their customer’s concern.

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We’ve written scores on how customers should properly describe a noise to their counterperson in order to get to the bottom of things for a first-visit resolution, and have provided some tips on how to pinpoint the specific area of the vehicle that the noise is coming from. But, as frustrating as vehicle noises are, they’re nothing compared to facing repair costs caused by someone ignoring a noise for far too long. Social media sites for automotive techs are filled with posts and pictures of vehicle systems reduced to scrap with the same caption: customer says it just started making a noise yesterday.

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Troubleshooter: Take some time to listen Back to video

There are just some noises that you will never hear sitting in the driver’s seat with the radio and HVAC on and the windows rolled up. For example, I was walking through a busy commercial parking lot recently and a vehicle make and model rolled by that I’m familiar with from a shop-floor perspective. It was emanating the unmistakable noise that a water pump makes just before it gives up the ghost, and I’m certain the driver was blissfully unaware of the impending doom. There’s a reason a lot of automakers build in a delay between the time you fire up the engine and when the radio and HVAC will power on. That delay provides a 3 to 5 second window to let you hear what’s happening with the engine before your favourite heavy-metal music starts blasting.

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There are all types of problems with engines that start with symptoms only audible during the first few seconds of engine run time. Collapsed hydraulic valve adjusters will fill with oil and go from a noticeable clack to silent running very quickly. Cast metal exhaust manifolds can leak when cold, but when they warm up they will expand to seal things up again, (left alone they will eventually leak exhaust gases all the time).

From time to time, make it a point of starting your vehicle with the windows rolled down and the radio and HVAC system both off. The same goes in order to be able to hear any drive-line or wheel noises during the first few blocks out or when returning back home. Once in a while you might benefit from having someone else fire up the engine while you’re standing out front. When a noise does pop up, rather than dread about what you might have to spend, just think about what you might save by getting things nipped in the bud.