I drove my car for the first time in a LONG time earlier, and I'd left it running in the driveway while I cleaned out some leaves in the garage. I immediately noticed this fairly loud noise, that at first I thought was a slight exhaust leak but after I opened up the hood, it was louder. I typically use a hard wooden dowel of some sort to listen to things like this and have kind of isolated it to the alternator/water pump area. The noise is loudest when I put the dowel on top of the water fill cap. I'm going to tear into it later this weeked, my first thought is a bearing in one of the above, but man...that water pump only has about 10,000 miles on it. The alternator is stock.

Any ideas?

 

I'll betcha it's the water pump. Mine tapped for a WHILE before I finally replaced it and it took care of that damn woodpecker under my hood.
The 1/2way good news is it did it for months and never completely died and left me stranded, tho.

 

shot in the dark here but my vacuum tank was hitting on the crank angle trigger wheel and made a woodpecker noise.

 

Did you ever sort it out?