I notice a bit of a "tick" at idle heard only from the inside of the car and only after engine heated. Not loud but reminds me of a slight valve tick or even the injectors closing. Only have about 7000 on car. Anyone else notice this with their 2.3 at idle?

 

yes i notice it too. don't know what it is. it get on my nerves. i notice mine the most when outside of the car though.

 

Wondering, How many miles on your car? Do you hear it at all times on only when heated up. I only notice it when engine hot and only inside the car. If normal then ok, but I am sure like me you would like to know if it should be be there.

 

Without hearing it, i would say its the fuel injectors. Mine are loud compared to my last car.

 

Mine does it too...i'm paranoid about it. I have 5000km on my 07 Mazda 3 Gt, and when it is warmed right up and i pop the hood, it sounds more ticky than it should. I was thinking it was the nature of these engines. But i also overfilled the oil, because the dipstick is brutal on these cars, and was worried it was because of that. I'm getting the oil changed on it tomorrow, and asked them to see if engine sounded strange. we'll see what they say.

 

I heard that tick in my P5's engine at about 7k miles. Later on, at about 35k, I blew up the engine while chasing a WRX and Miata up some lonely twisty road.
Oil starvation from cornering is what killed my motor (It's happened to more Proteges than mine, so some of us got baffled oilpans from AWR), but luckily for me, I mentioned the tick when I 1st heard it, so Mazda blamed the engine faliure on the phantom tick.

Got a new motor put in free of charge.


I'm not saying that you're gonna blow up your motor, I'm just mentioning how glad I was that I told my dealer about that tick as soon as I heard it.

 

Oil Starvation??? Just lack of oil, or from oil shifting while cornering??? That's bad luck, but good luck you got it fixed for free, ha ha.