Dear Tom & Ray -
My wife and I have a 2006 Ford Explorer that my wife has “learned” to love. When we first bought it she was driving a Civic and was sure that she was never going to be able to park the Explorer without crashing. Anyway, I digress. Last summer I noticed that everytime I got in to drive it (I have the 2001 Civic now) there is a “Clicking” sound coming from the dashboard. I can’t pinpoint exactly where in the dash it is coming from but it drives me NUTS! My wife can easily ignore it but I can’t. It seems to be worse this summer so far and it only happens in the summer.
I plan to record the noise and if I am fortunate enough to be able to speak with you about it I will have the recording of it. Anyway, I can’t take much more of the clicking! Please HELP!!!
Usually a clicking from within the dash area is a blend door motor gone bad.
The heater and a/c air doors are moved,opened,closed by little electric motors housed in a 4x4x1 ( or so ) shell and that contains many little plastic gears for ratio reduction, much like the gears of a plastic clockwork.
The gears become stripped and the clicking is the repeated attempts of the motor to move a door that won’t.
A new blend door motor seems in order but additionally, what caused the gears to strip ?
It could be that a door is not able to move from debris in the ducts and that needs fixed first.
if it has climate controll its probably a stuck plenum (the door to switch from heat to a/c to defrost) there is a small actuator that moves this door with a threaded rod either the door is missaligned or the rod is improperly adjusted. try moving to defrost and see if clicking sound stops for the few seconds it takes to move from floor to windshield.