What the heck is this intermittent banging/ticking noise on my 997.2S? I only seem to hear it when I'm idling. Car has 18k miles on it only.

.mp3 attached (in .zip)

 

Initial guess is water pump failure (or the beginning thereof). Mine made similar noise before I took it in. Failed at 26K miles for me.

 

+1. take a look bottom of the water pump. If there are signs of a coolant leak ( white powdery residue or actual coolant ) get if fixed now. If it fails completely you could have much bigger problems to deal with.

 

I hope it's just the water pump. Where is it located?

 

OP let me know if you confirm this to be the water pump. The MP3 is a good base line for detecting this.

 

Located bottom left of engine, drivers side, just behind the catalitic converter. The link below shows various pictures of it. On the pic of the engine the water pump has two large hoses coming from it and shows evidence of a leak.

http://www.google.com/search?q=porsc...rflb8E9O7MEVM:

 

When I first heard your clip I was concerned that you have the problem I had, a scored cylinder. But after hearing yours and hearing my clip, they are distinct.

Here is the youtube of my car from Oct 2010, bad bad sound of a scored cyl. Replaced engine under warranty, had it for 1 month, gave me loaner panamera , racing green....


Good luck please keep us posted

 

Update: I took the car in for warranty service, and the dealer determined that the noise was, in fact, due to a failing water pump - as suggested by Dadio, MBENZF1, and socialpro. Any of you guys want to be my personal mechanic?

The service manager explained that it took a while to isolate the noise because it was intermittent, but they were eventually able to trace it to the water pump. When they took it off, there was excessive play in one of the parts, compared to a new one they had on hand. He says they don't get a lot of water pump failures. I have less than 20k miles on the car now, so hopefully that's the only thing that brakes.

Thanks to everyone for taking a listen to the clip and helping with this issue.