copado

All,

This just started today and can't figure out what might be causing it. I have a noise that happens while driving (not while stopped, and not a creak/rattle) that sounds as though it's behind the glovebox area. It lasts for about 2-3 seconds at a time and runs at different intervals - tonight I drove for 30 minutes home and it happened off and on the entire way. Seems like something might be going bad?

To me it sounds like an old phone ringing (crazy right?) or a bit like a motor turning/telescoping something.

I hear it best when the A/C is off and at lower speeds, though it could be happening at high speeds also, just too noisy to hear. I thought it might be an air compressor so tried to adjust the height of the car - no noise then.

I'm going to try to take it in tomorrow, but as it's intermittent, not sure it'll actually get fixed. Any suggestions of what to look for or test?

josephpallan

Did you check the glovebox or surrounding area for objects which may be clashing?

theanimala

Pretty sure this is the same as mentioned in many previous threads. Mine sounds like an electronic scraping / pinging sound, goes about 6 times and then stops. If that's it, it's been said its the nav hard drive. Happens on CPO and brand new cars...

the_duke

+1

Very well could be the MMI hard drive. I love my car but I don't understand why they don't use a SSD to avoid the noise issue and a much larger capacity drive at that. Not like we're talking about much money for the upgrade. It would also have the benefit of making the MMI faster.

derfA8L

+2

Both my previous 2011 and current 2015 A8L's made/make a mechanical "scraping" sound intermittently. Usually within a minute or two of initial start-up, and then approximately every 30-40 minutes on an extended drive. It typically goes through about 8 scrape repetitions per cycle. Since it hasn't negatively affected anything that I'm aware of, I don't pay attention to it.

Wonds

I'd second the mmi hard drive being the issue. I think it's to do with loading new sections of the map as the navigation is always on.
It's located in the section with the sd cards and cd slot.

copado

Closing the loop (kind of at least) on this issue. It was at the dealer 3 times for this issue. It only happens when the sunroof is open - which sounds crazy but that's how this one happens. So - turns out it's not the hard drive, they thought it was dampers moving and doing self tests but at the end of the day they just shrugged their shoulders and threw up their hands saying they had no idea. If you end up with this same issue - please let me know. Since it's getting colder in VA I'm not going to hear it until late spring again...