About a mile from home on my way to work Tuesday, out of the blue, there came a ticking sound from the passenger side of the CTBNL. It was a high frequency sound tick, loud, but not enough to drown out every other normal driving noise and occurring at about 2 or 3 times a second. The steering felt fine and I had no warning lights. I put my hand on the seat, the dashboard, the transmission and nothing was vibrating, As I slowed for the next cross street to pull over, the sound didn’t change, so not speed dependent. When I pushed in the clutch in, the sound once again remained constant, so no engine or transmission. Hmmm.
I stopped, left the car running and stepped outside. I could still hear the ticking, it was less loud and coming from the area around the windshield / hood on the passenger side. A long inactive synapse tingled, I was now pretty sure I knew what it was. I got back in the car and turned the HVAC fan from 1 to 0. The ticking stopped.
I just left the fan off for the rest of the commute. When I got home I pulled the car into the garage (baby, it was cold outside) where I removed the glove box and laid on my back in passenger side with my feet out the door to take out the three screws that hold the motor up. Somehow a tenacious live oak leaf had found its way into the cowl area, under a plastic cover, then up and over a 1-1/2″ metal dam and through a loose mesh screen to fall into the fan motor. That 3″ long intact leaf wasn’t the only thing in the fan either, but it was the noise maker. I also pulled out a couple of small acorn pieces, a couple of small broken leaf pieces, several strands of pine straw and a lot of dust that through centripetal force and the design of fan had been wedged into the very bottom.