Clicking sound from behind the dash

[Kyle Ford]

Hi Everyone, newbie here. I have a 2014 Limited, and the click starts as soon as you open a door, or even the window on the hatch. The car doesn't need to be running. Do you all think it's the same thing?

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[tgma]

There are two actuators, one is for the blend of cold to hot air, the other is the diverter from floor to vents to defrost.
If you adjust each dial (or push button setting if you have climate control) slowly, you can make the clicking start and stop. For me, my blend door will not go full cold, if it's cranked to full cold I get the clicking for about 30 seconds and then it gives up trying to move the blend door. However if I move the dial just one click up from full cold, no clicks and everything works fine. I can move from hot to cold and back with no issues as long as I never go full cold.
Once you figure out if it is the blend door or the diverter, we can help you replace the defective part.
The gears don't strip out inside the actuator, the big exposed drive spline either loses a tooth or the housing cracks allowing the gears to slip past one another. Never seen one where the gears inside stripped out.
This can also happen with the rear blend door in the same fashion, but the clicking will be from the rear obviously.

 

[Walt460]

So mine is the blend door and replacing the actuator has not fixed the problem. So now what do I do to stop the "clicking" sound?

 

[star-art]

Which "actuator" did you replace? According to your signature, it seems you have a 2011 XLT Premium. This means you have dual-zone climate control so there are three blend door actuators (driver, front passenger, and rear).

 

[eddytheexpy]

resurrecting this thread again...

I've had a clicking sound coming from the cluster panel for since I bought my rig (about a year and a half at this point) and it is definitely not an actuator or any macro mechanical sound for that matter. It's a ~4 per second gentle clicking that persists while the vehicle thinks someone is inside. If I trick it to think I'm out of the vehicle, it stops once all the accessories shut off. No idea if it continues while the engine is running because it's such a subtle noise. I have full functionality of all accessories and HVAC so there's not a smoking gun pointing me to any issue nor a parasitic draw large enough to effect battery charge. It just makes a little noise that you might not even notice if there's any quantity of background noise.

I want to guess that it's a relay wigging out but I have no idea what that actually sounds like. Though, if I had to guess what that sounds like, this would be the noise. It's such a subtle tapping that even if I try to record the sound, my phone doesn't catch it. Anyone have ideas/ways to diagnose this one? I've never dealt with any electrical system issues before so picture the confused John Travolta scene from Pulp Fiction with him holding a multimeter.

btw, this is on a 2011 Limited EL 4x4