For the past month or so, my car has been making this odd "pop pop pop" noise from under the hood; sounds like it's somewhere around the left front wheel area.
It seems to be in the morning when I first am off to work, it does it once and then doesn't seem to do it again. IIRC, it has, on occasion, done it after work, when I am going home, too. At first, I thought it might be something in the suspension, as it happened to occur while driving, but yesterday, it happened while I was sitting at a stop sign near my house, waiting for traffic to clear.
The sound is very regular, takes about a second for the three pops to sound and the three pops are evenly spaced. The pops aren't very loud...I suspect that I hear it only because I usually drive with the radio volume pretty low, if not off. I would guess that at more normal volume, one would probably not even notice the sounds. Also, they don't have much of a metallic sound, either. I haven't driven with the windows open, as it is still very cool in the mornings, but the noise comes in well enough
through the firewall and I would guess that you can hear it from the outside.
My extended warranty expired in April, so I had the entire car gone through twice (once by my mechanic and once at the dealer) prior to expiration. Everything appears to be in working order (although both missed a wet water pump
, which I ended up replacing out of warranty; and both missed a burned out brake light...so it's possible they missed something else while they were at it). We are taking this car on a 3-4K mile trip toward the end of the month, so if there's something that needs attention now, I'd need to address it very soon.
Any ideas as to what this sound is??? Thanks for your help.