One idea to the posting earlier as reproduced below said " I had the same problem a few weeks ago so I took it into a garage and he told me it was a sticky valve and he would do it for £165.00 + VAT. not having the cash on me I said I would come back (yeah right) ! I flushed the oil then put in some magnetech oil and filter and guess what ? no more tapping and saved myself around £165 " Gotta 1989 G reg 440 with 1.7 manual petrol engine. The old lady starts fine and runs well. When starting a journey there is often a clicking sound coming from the engine bay. It is a rapidly repeated and irregular clicking sound, rather metallic. It isn't always there at the start of a journey and lasts only a minute or so. It happens when the car is moving, still or in neutral BUT only when the engine is cold. It really is one of those irregular sounds as it can't be guaranteed to happen every time the engine is cold!!!! Methinks that it sound like a relay but seems to be coming from the middle of the engine bay rather than the right hand side where the relays and fuses are. The indicators and wipers work o.k. Any ideas will be appreciated. I have tried running the engine and leaping out of the car and opening the bonnet to locate the source of the clicking but fid it difficult to identify where it is coming from. Could it be a death watch Beetle sending a Morse code message to the scrapyard???? Does this make sense please folks? Seems easy to do to stop the metallic tapping that occurs at odd times.