grottoman

Hello all-

I didn't find any hits related to this, sorry if I missed them.

As we get blasted with wintry weather down here (>3 inches in Birmingham, Alabama), I was forced to put the roof up, and occasionally even use the heater.

It has begun occasionally making a fairly large amount of noise, along with some vibration sensation, at various times.

Not every time, but seems most consistently after maybe 10-15 seconds of running the heater (triggering the fan), and once it starts, it seems to continue until I cut the fan off.

But sometimes it doesn't happen at all.

I think it's time for me to do a preventative timing belt replacement (again, argh!) anyway, so I'll probably get it looked at then, but I was curious to get people's take on the issue.

Although it's wintry, it's not actually the coldest snap of weather we've had in the past few months, so I don't think it's weather related necessarily, although that crossed my mind.

Haven't been able to do much testing to determine things like
-only in heat mode, or ac also? (never understood why the ac light comes on when heater is heating, btw, but that's another topic)
-visible issue? (i.e., if I open the hood, will I see something)
-how long it lasts? (it's loud enough and distressing enough that I've shut it off quickly each time, and have lately stopped turning it on, afraid something bad might happen)

Any thoughts are welcome (about the car, not the comedy of snow in the south. I'm from Connecticut, so I can mock the locals, but it's all about context; with no sand, salt, or snow ploughs, even a little snow or ice can bring this place to its knees).