Ticking Noise From Aux Heater

[italiastar]

We are soon approaching the ticking season and I've finally got an answer from SEAT (lack of) customer services - apparantly the heater should tick! the noise is from the operation of a solenoid within the heater and is normal - I'd be grateful if you could please confirm whether this is the case from your experiences and what dealers have told you about this "feature".

 

Does anyone know what this heater does (apart from tick and sometimes belch out white smoke) and whether it's fitted to other diesel cars such as my wife's fabia?

[Ivor_E_Tower]

Ticking is normal, loudness of the "tick" varies and I wouldn't risk taking mine to a dealer in an attempt to make it any quieter (it's not very noisy anyway). If I felt like having a good laugh, I could ask the dealer what they thought (but best not to let them get into waffle mode...)

Not aware of this type of device being fitted to "normal" diesel cars, only to diesel MPV's.

[rwtomkins]

I don't think the ticking comes from a solenoid, my understanding is it comes from the fuel pump which has to work harder in some conditions than others and therefore has a varying noise level as described by Mr Tower. I agree the ticking can be considered as normal in the sense that it is not a defect, but nevertheless it apparently doesn't occur in more recent Ford Galaxies and I definitely recall a thread during the last ticking season in which one member said the ticking was the subject of a Ford Technical Services Bulletin and a fix had been made available to anyone who wanted it. (Presumably this consists of swapping the fuel pump with the newer, quieter unit.) I'm going to decide whether or not to take them up on the offer when the annual service falls due.

 

In my experience Ford dealers are completely ignorant even of the aux heater's existence, let along the ticking noise, but at least the TSB is there to put them right. If Seat haven't issued a TSB, no doubt it will be even harder to get a Seat dealer to do anything about it.

 

For a full decription of what the heater does, see the many, many other threads on auxiliary heater. It's there because in cold weather the efficient diesel engine doesn't warm the coolant up quickly enough, so it comes in to generate an extra bit of heat.

[italiastar]

Thank for the detailed reply. If anyone has a copy of the TIS relating to this, I'd love to get my hands on a copy - as usual it appears that SEAT customer services have not investigated the issue I raised and just fed me some "information"

 

This should be interesting, as so far, the only satisfactory response I've had is when they sent me a 130 sticker for my car - even the customer service "breakdown book" took 2 months to arrive.