My wife's Civic has developed a sporadic ticking noise a month or so ago, it has gotten louder and happens more frequently now.

It sounds like it's coming from the front-center to front-passenger side. I've had it to the shop a few times and they can't figure it out.

It doesn't happen all the time or consistently whenever I do something such as turn the corner sharply, but it does seem to start happening most often when I do something to "jar it loose" (hard bump, sharp turn). It only ticks when the car is in motion, not at idle so I don't think it's the motor. As I speed up the tick speeds up until 40 MPH when I either can't hear it anymore or it goes away.

This YouTube video has the exact same sound my car is making at about 30 MPH, and my car doesn't make this noise at idle like the car in the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeY_3HcC1MI

Thanks for any help

 

Does it do it when you turn either left or right? Is it doing it only when you turn left per say?
funny thing is that in the video its making the ticking on Idle, which yours is not. It could be a number of thing, is it manual?

 

It has happened after turning left and right, after accelerating from a stop light, after hitting a hard bump in the road. It's an automatic.

The shop I took my car to replaced the input shaft bearing last week. I then drove the car over 300 miles to a hotel parking garage where it sat for the weekend in Vegas and it never ticked once. But after pulling out of the parking spot and making a right it started to do it again, and it did it off and on all the way home. I took the car back to the shop and they replaced the whole front axle, and the next day the car started to make that ticking sound again.

The ticking doesn't seem to happen when we are cruising down the road unless we are going so fast we don't hear it(maybe road noise obscures it?) but it does start after slowing to make turns or slowing down for a light and then accelerating it will start up.

 

One thing you could try if haven't yet is to roll down the passenger window and whoever is in the passenger window see if you can here the noise loud, and then have the driver check, It could help make out which side it might be coming from. Its hard for me to figure exactly what the problem is, If it were me in this situation, i would put the car on jackstands (securely) on a flat surface and start the car and have someone in the car and put it in drive and leave foot on the brake while you go under and see if you can narrow it down to where its coming from, i know its not very safe, so most members on here won't recommend this, neither do i but im just saying if im in your situation and even a shop can't figure it out. You could try another shop in your area. Was the shop you went to ASE certified?

 

Did they replace both axles? I had a loud tick coming from the drivers side of mine. It was very sporadic at first but after many kms it started to get worse, it got to the point it happened a lot. It occurred while the car was moving and mainly while accelerating and turning and it seemed to go away above 50 or 60kph(30 or 35mph-ish). Turned out to be the passenger side axle (it was weird I would have bet my life it was the drivers side).

 

Could be a bad axle, also check the plates behind the brake rotor, maybe something as simple as rocks in the hubcaps?

I doubt you'd hear it with the car jacked up, if you do that it is better (and of course much much safer) anyway to just turn the wheels by hand as then you can hear the tiniest noise without any interference from the motor. A good test is to go to a parking lot and have someone stand outside while you drive past them, do it on both sides.

 

They replaced the whole front axle, cv joints-everything. Even after they did that the sound would occur.

I took it in one more time and they claimed they still couldn't find a problem. But since then the ticking noise has pretty much gone away, it does occur every now and then but goes away as quickly as it started. I'll crawl under there and check for rocks, but I ***ume since they had it up in the lift on multiple occasions they would have looked at that.