Thread: Rattling?!?!?!
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Old 04-22-2004, 10:25 PM   #5
Tom_91_LX
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Join Date: Apr 2004
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Re: Re: Rattling?!?!?!

I've had '84, '86, and '91 Accords, a '00 Civic, and '01 Prelude, and they all rattled. But a lot of the rattles can be eliminated by experimenting with different materials.

There were two major rattles in my 91 sedan that I was able to almost completely get rid of. One was coming from the area of the right front door. I bought some self-stick felt pads at Home Depot and cut them into several 1" squares, and then stacked them together so they formed a block about 1.5" thick. I stuck it on the end of the passenger side of the dash (the part that is hidden when the door is closed) so that when the door is closed, the felt block puts pressure on the door panel. You know how sometimes you can press your hand against a door or dash panel and it stops rattling? It's kind of the same idea. Worked great. The other bad rattle was my glove box, and adjusting the latch didn't help. I used some clear self-stick rubber bumpers, the kind you put on the back of framed pictures to hold them out from the wall, and put them next to the latch so that I have to press hard on the glovebox to get it to close. It closes more tightly, and the result was that it rattles a lot less. I still need to get into the driver's door because what I think are the door lock rods are clanking in time to the beat of the door speaker.

My '00 Civic's dash rattled like crazy. Actually, it was more like a ticking sound from a lot of different places. I took off most of the lower dash panels and glovebox, and used pieces of thin self-stick moleskin between every place I could find where two pieces of metal came together, also, I put the moleskin over all the screw grommets for the dash panels (you can puncture right through it when you go to screw them back in).

My '01 Prelude's rear deck would buzz badly when the music was turned up. The problem was that there was (if I recall) no insulation between the molded deck panel (where the speaker grilles are) and the sheet metal underneath that the speakers themselves are mounted in. I removed the panel and sandwiched some foam padding from a craft store between the panel and the sheet metal. The panel was held in place by clips, so I had to press down really hard when reinstalling the panel to get the clips to engage. But the foam padding, along with the fact that the deck panel was much tighter, eliminated the buzzing.

Those are just a few ideas. Sometimes it's good to have someone else drive so you listen for exactly where the rattles are coming from. Press your hand against different surfaces and if the rattle stops, you know that is the area where you need to try and install something to duplicate that same pressure.

Tom
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