I started doing research about the noise in the steering column of my Toyota RAV4, and it turns out that a lot of people have this same knocking/popping/groaning sound (threads here and here.)

People that are writing are also saying that the dealer mechanics are "unable to reproduce this problem", same as the Toyota dealer here in Anchorage, Alaska. After watching the X-Files, this sounds like a cover-up to me.

This problem also makes me wonder what needs to be done to have a recall on this issue? I'm going to get into that next, as this is pissing me off big-time.

In a way this is also upsetting because I heard so much about Toyota quality that I'm surprised to have such a major problem so early (33K miles).

(A little later in the day ...) I just figured out how to deal with this. Since my digital camera also takes movies, I'm going to take the car out for a spin w/ the camera running, and see if it can pick up all the noise. This way I can show it to the dealer (if need be), post it on YouTube, and have some proof that this was a big problem while the car was under warranty.