86 560sl 215k mi

Sitting in the dreaded drive thru lane since my kids demanded Star Wars stuff from the King of Burgers and since I was close to a brick wall for a few mins, the motor noises were amplified. I hear a tick, tick, tick, that gets louder then quiets down in sort of a regular pattern over the course of 30 seconds or so the repeats. Sort of tick, tick, tick, tick, TICK, TICK, TICK, TICK, tick, tick, tick, tick.

A a rule my motor seems a little noisier than it should anyway but I'm guessing this is a symptom of something more serious but overall the performance is OK.

JB

I once had a car with a fast food tick - for years and it never amounted to a problem. The car sounded fine normally, it sounded fine standing over the engine with the hood open, but put me up against a brick wall at a fast food drive through and there was a consistent tick. My solution was to eventually stop worring about it. It never got any worse and the car always drove fine. The ticking never showed up under any other circumstances. I concluded it was a twilight zone thing. Of course one solution is to stop eating fast food.

A constant tick is one thing, a tick that moves around seems a little more troublesome. I'm mostly concerned that maybe the timing chain has skipped a tooth or something.

jB