PulsCar analysis of NHTSA public data, September 2026 Engine ticking: what 2,552 owner complaints, 41 engine recall campaigns and 418 manufacturer communications say License: CC BY 4.0. Credit "PulsCar analysis of NHTSA public data, September 2026" with a link to https://pulscar.io/blog/car-ticking-noise All queries were run on 18 September 2026. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. SOURCE FILES -------------------------------------------------------------------------- NHTSA public flat files from https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/, in local SQLite. Complaints FLAT_CMPL. 777,040 vehicle complaints received 1 January 2015 to 8 September 2026. Dictionary: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/ffdd/cmpl/CMPL.txt Recalls FLAT_RCL, campaigns counted DISTINCT on the campaign number, populations at each campaign's largest POTAFF. Communications FLAT_TSBS, counted DISTINCT on the NHTSA ID. https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/ffdd/tsbs/TSBS.txt CASE SENSITIVITY. NHTSA complaint narratives are ALL CAPITALS through 2020 and mixed case from 2021 onward. An uppercase regex without re.IGNORECASE, or an uppercase SQLite GLOB, silently drops most post-2020 complaints — here that would have removed roughly half the GM 6.2L and Nissan VC-Turbo clusters, which are the newest in the file. Every regex below was compiled with re.IGNORECASE; SQLite LIKE and FTS5 MATCH are case-insensitive. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. THE COMPLAINT SET (2,552) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Step 1. complaints_fts MATCH 'tick OR ticks OR ticking OR ticked OR tapping OR taps' -> 4,023 candidates. Step 2. Keep a complaint only if a tick word (\btick\w*\b, \btapping\b, \btappet\w*\b) has an ENGINE word within 150 characters on either side (engine, motor, under the hood, valve, lifter, camshaft, rocker, timing chain, oil, cylinder, piston, injector, manifold, exhaust, head, crank, rpm, idle, accelerate, rev) AND no NON-ENGINE word in the same window (turn signal, blinker, relay click, clock, tire, wheel, brake, suspension, air conditioning, blower, door, seat, window, wiper, radio, speaker, steering column or wheel, windshield, trim piece, "ticking time bomb") AND no negation of the tick ("no ticking", "there was no tapping"). Step 3. Drop motorcycle, powersports and heavy-truck makes. FINAL SET: 2,552. SAMPLE READING. Thirty complaints drawn at random and read in full. Twenty- six described a genuine engine tick or tap. Four did not: one said explicitly that there was no ticking, one was a windshield trim piece tapping, one used "ticking time bomb" as a figure of speech, and one was ambiguous. FALSE-POSITIVE RATE about 13%. The first two of those four patterns were then added to the exclusion list above and the set was rebuilt, which is why this folder's count (2,552) is lower than the first pass (2,629). -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. THE MOST IMPORTANT CAVEAT — READ BEFORE USING ANY PERCENTAGE -------------------------------------------------------------------------- A federal safety complaint is something people file when a car frightens them or costs them money. A tick that a quart of oil fixed on a Saturday morning is not in this file, and never will be. So the shares below measure WHICH TICKS GET REPORTED, not which causes are most common in the world. That is why the page this folder supports does not claim any cause is "X% of ticking". An earlier version of that page carried a full frequency breakdown (40% low oil, 20% lifters, and so on) with no source behind it. Those figures were removed, not replaced with these: the honest statement is that nobody — including us — can measure cause frequency for engine ticking from public data, because the cheap outcomes are invisible. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. WHAT WAS COUNTED -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ticking-by-context.csv Structured TOWED, CRASH and FIRE flags, injuries, and mileage (MILES, 0 < miles < 400,000) against the whole-file baseline. Crash flag 0.59% against a 4.37% baseline; towed 4.43% against 5.11%; fire 1.21% against 1.82%. A tick is a slow problem, not a roadside one — which is exactly what makes it easy to postpone. Mileage: median 85,000 across 1,312 readings, quartiles 57,000 and 116,000; 13.7% at or under 36,000 miles. ticking-what-owners-name.csv Case-insensitive regex families across the 2,552 narratives. Mentions, not confirmed diagnoses; a narrative can match several and the shares do not add to 100. Headline shares, in order: rod knock, bearing failure or engine seizure 614 24.06% lifter, tappet, rocker or camshaft 601 23.55% low oil, oil consumption or oil pressure 368 14.42% spark plug, coil or misfire 212 8.31% exhaust manifold, gasket or broken bolts 201 7.88% timing chain, tensioner or guides 136 5.33% a shop or dealer called the noise normal 94 3.68% fuel injector or direct-injection fuel system 70 2.74% the tick described as preceding engine failure 46 1.80% And how the tick behaved: under acceleration or with rpm 496 19.44% at idle 183 7.17% getting louder or worse over time 131 5.13% only on a cold start, fading when warm 45 1.76% a check engine or warning light with it 775 30.37% a recall, campaign or warranty named 836 32.76% ticking-by-make-and-model.csv Makes as a rate per 10,000 of that make's own complaints; models as a share of that model's own complaints. Denominators are in the file. NOT failure rates: complaints are unverified, NHTSA publishes no vehicles-on-the-road denominator, owners of some brands file more readily, and 32.76% of this set already names a recall or warranty programme. ticking-engine-recalls.csv Campaigns whose defect or consequence text contains tick, tapping, knocking, valve train, lifter or connecting rod AND whose component string starts with ENGINE: 41 campaigns, 2,188,572 potentially affected units. The component filter is what separates engine noise from the much larger set of campaigns that merely use the word "knocking" about something else. Manufacturer communications (counted, not published as a CSV) tsbs_fts MATCH 'NEAR(tick* engine, 12) OR NEAR(tapping engine, 12) OR NEAR(tick* valve*, 10) OR NEAR(tick* lifter*, 10) OR "engine tick" OR "ticking noise" OR "tapping noise"' -> 418 distinct NHTSA IDs. By maker, Chevrolet 156, GMC 129, Cadillac 96, Ford 44, Buick 32, Jeep 29, BMW 25. 43 mention a lifter, 37 use the word "normal", 27 a manifold, 10 an injector, 10 say "do not replace". -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. DOCUMENTS READ IN FULL -------------------------------------------------------------------------- GM Service Bulletin 07-06-04-025M, June 2020, NHTSA ID 10176648, retrieved as https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2020/MC-10176648-9999.pdf "Information on Clicking/Ticking Sound/Noise Heard During Cold Start", covering 2008-2020 Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC and Saturn models with the 3.0L or 3.6L VVT direct-injection V6 (RPOs LF1, LF3, LF4, LFW, LFY, LGY, LLT, LFX, LGW, LGX, LGZ). Quoted: "Inform the customer that this is normal operation of the high pressure fuel pump and injectors" / "DO NOT replace the high pressure fuel pump and/or injectors" / "DO NOT attempt to repair or replace any parts for this kind of clicking or ticking noise concern. The clicking or ticking sound is not indicative of any concerns with the engine or the vehicle. You may wish to give the customer a copy of this bulletin." Recall 25V274000 (GM, 597,571 vehicles, 24 April 2025): 2021-2024 Cadillac Escalade/ESV, Chevrolet Silverado 1500, Suburban, Tahoe, GMC Sierra 1500, Yukon, Yukon XL with the 6.2L V8 — "The connecting rod and/or crankshaft engine components may have manufacturing defects that can lead to engine" failure. Remedy: inspect, and for vehicles that pass, higher-viscosity oil, a new filler cap, a new filter and an oil-life software update. Recall 25V437000 (Nissan, 443,899 vehicles, 27 June 2025): 2021-2024 Rogue, 2019-2020 Altima, 2019-2022 Infiniti QX50 and 2022 QX55 with the 1.5L three-cylinder or 2.0L four-cylinder VC-Turbo. This Part 573 year range is the source for the model years used on the page; a query of the recall file is how the 2021 Rogue was confirmed rather than assumed. Recall 26V080000 (Nissan, 323,917 vehicles, 11 February 2026): 2023-2025 Rogue 1.5L VC-Turbo — "Increased temperatures can break down the engine oil, which may cause the engine bearings to seize." Recall 15V568000 (Hyundai, 470,000 2011-2012 Sonata) and 19V120000 (Kia, 378,967 2012-2016 Soul 1.6L GDI) are the two largest non-GM engine campaigns in the set. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6. LIMITATIONS -------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Complaints are self-reported, unverified, and are not failure rates. - The severity filter in section 3 is the dominant bias in this folder. - Regex families count words, not diagnoses. - A sibling page, "Chevy Silverado engine ticking", analyses 424 complaints drawn from a different universe (eight GM full-size V8 nameplates, 2014-2026 model years only) with a different query. Its counts and these are not interchangeable and must not be added.