ZachTheOne

I help my family run our auto body and my dad picked up a crashed 06 accord hybrid to help a customer, so I'm trying to help him diagnose this noise. The car wasn't hit that hard, not enough to hurt the mounts or anything but enough to total it for insurance. So anyways he's fixing it and tells me it makes a ticking noise. Like any honda guy, I think higher mileage honda, probably valve lash, maybe it needs an oil change. So I start it and hear this clacking thing going on. It didn't sound quite like valve lash and definitely wasn't rod knock so to verify I revved it a little and while the head purred, the sound didn't alter, just kind of became overshadowed by the engine sound. So I'm wondering with all the fancy doodads they have on this j30a4 hybrid, what the eff is making this noise! I'm wondering if it's some sort of malfunctioning balancer while it's running in 3 cylinder mode, etc.

I've come to know youtube as a great source for citing engine sounds, and low and behold this sucker has the same problem. This guy who posted the video says it only happens idling and reverse, so maybe its some transition device that controls the switch to hybrid functionality?

The only thing I havn't checked is actually driving it to see when or if the sound goes away under any condition, hoping it rings a bell to someone on here.

ZachTheOne

UPDATE: Just found out the car had a CEL for misfire in Cylinder 3. We changed the boot that connects the air box to the throttle body, then it sounded better but the code changed to Misfire in Cyl 1. So we cleared the code and reset the ECU so that it'll re-adjust to the new intake pressure. So far though it seems to have fixed that horrible noise, something must have been out of adjustment from readings the MAF was getting from that cracked intake boot.