So I am driving yesterday and I have to make a U-turn on a busy road. As I am making the u-turn, I run up, on, and off a curb, small curb 2-4", nothing crazy. When I get the truck around I floor it to speed up with traffic. No noises, no loss in power, nothing.... I see the "check gauges" light come on the dashboard. I look down and my water temp gauge starts free falling back to cold. The water temp gauge stopped at fully pinned cold. I pull over and get out expecting a ton of water everywhere, nothing. All I hear is a bit of "ticking" coming from the intake area. I cant tell if it is a lifter, or a pulley... but definitely from the top of the engine, but not too loud. I pull into a parking lot and shut the truck off to check out the engine bay some more... nothing looks weird. Start it up, no ticking, gauge is now showing full normal operating temperature, and the "check gauges" light is off. The truck is completely fine for the next 40 miles.

This morning I go to start the truck and I hear one of my lazy lifters (its been like this since I bought the truck 50,000 miles ago), tick pretty loudly for 2 seconds, oil pressure comes up, and tick is gone. I am probably over exagurating the lifter noise because of what happened last night.... and I just paid closer attention than normal.

Is this weird or what? I was thinking bad ground on the water temp sending unit? But the random ticking noise?

 

Sounds like you could have jarred things around a little. Maybe you have a small crack on your temp guage that controls the cluster? There are 2 I believe and if they don't match up to another you can have a CEL come on. Maybe this was the intake noise you heard as the engine could have been trying to change air/fuel ratios?

I've ran up/over a median before that had angled curbs. The curb styles that round-abouts have. I ran up/over it and OMG, it sent me through the roof. Alot rougher than I anticipated, and it even knocked my aftermarket radio into the dash..lol I thought I heard funny noises after that as well, but my head was playing tricks on me. I was just more aware and cautious after that happened and was listening for every noise I could find.

I'd wait till it happens again before you spend money fixing what isn't broke at the current time.

 

That is a great point!