Found Ticking Noise!

[NicLX470]

First of all I have started to notice a intermittent tick coming from inside the b-pillar when going over rough roads or bumps. I am 6 foot tall and my ear is against the pillar when driving. I have been trying to diagnose it myself and was finally able to duplicate it by pressing on ANY part of the door while closed from the outside even when the car was not in motion. If the door was on open then it would not happen. So I narrowed it down to the big metal ring that holds the door closed. I tried to jiggle that part to see if it would duplicate the noise bit I could not get it to move. So I gave up for a few weeks and still would hear the noise. So finally, determined to figure it out I made an appointment next month for them to check it out with my next oil change. So now I wait till December. Well I decided to take a 4 hour trip to Austin this weekend to see some friends and wanted to try one more time to fix the problem myself. So I go out to the car and wrap a towel around the big metal ring and pull as hard as I could and no sound.....until I let go.....and I heard the infamous pop!!! It was the part making the noise!! But now how to get it to stop? I took a butter knife and wedged it underneath between the plastic and the metal door and there were a few more loud pops and then nothing. Perfect!!! No matter what I do now the noise is gone!!!!!

I also got pretty good gas mileage too. I usually am pretty heavy footed and I am sure some of you have gotten better with their 3.5L

Picture 1 ) The popping part....

Picture 1 ) Tank average, I got it up past 28.5 but I got a picture of this....

Picture 2 ) I don't know if this is an average of all tanks or what.

hinge.bmp

mpg.bmp

avg.bmp