Annoying intermittent ticking/rattle

[Benj1m]

Hi everyone

Hope someone can shed some light on this before I put it in the garage for an hour.
For a while now I have been getting an intermittent ticking, rattling noise which sounds like it could be coming from behind the drivers side dash. It’s a strange one as I can start it from cold and no noise , drive 20 miles and stop, no noise, drive home and then the noise will be there. But not everytime, it is very annoying. Car is a 17 plate scirocco r 35000 miles. It starts after I have been driving and come to a stop. If I rev the engine it disappears and then as soon as you take your foot off the pedal it resumes.
I have no lights on the dash indicating any faults and the car has just been in for a major service and came back with just a warning on rusty rear springs.
I will add that I have always found my engine to be quite noisy with the timing and water pump chugging along. Is this normal? Iv been told it is and Iv never had any other problems and had the cam changed two years ago.

[little_nat_pat]

I get a similar rattle that fits this description - only happens after a long drive and only when the pedals aren't engaged and the car is idling. Difficult noise to describe but it's almost a "soft", high frequency rattle rather than a hard sound, almost like a piece of plastic trim knocking very quickly against something else? I was searching for it at a traffic light one day by attempting to press on different panels in the footwell to see if any of them were loose. I inadvertently kicked one of the panels and it stopped - the only way i can describe the location is that it was behind the main fascia panel that extends from below the steering wheel on the side closest to the centre console. If you run your hand down the panel, you will feel a distinct step/join roughly where your left shin would be if you were on the clutch pedal (similar sort of depth as the obd port on the other side).

The main fascia panel stops and the next panel is quite loose/flimsy, there are also some bolts through it which i tried pushing in once i'd stopped too - when i kicked it and pushed on it in a couple of places, the noise stopped dead. There is seemingly quite alot of play/movement in that panel and I can only assume something was unclipped or not secured properly. Might be worth giving all the bolts down there a tweak to see if it's any of them while you're at it.