Tons of rattles

[bstjnky]

Where do I begin to diagonose my rattles? The tail gate seems to be the source, but not the only one. What are the common places that the rattles are coming from? How do I fix it?
Thanks, Jason

 

[Kenneth Walsworth]

Depending on how many rattles you have and how badly they annoy you this can be a very time consuming and patience trying excersize. You are going to have to isolate and fix them one by one genrally unless you know positively where they are coming from. Just like a pendulum or tuning fork, pieces of metal and plastic in your vehicle have a period to them and when the bass oscillates them at this frequency or harmonic of this frequency we get rattles. You need to find a CD that has a wide bass frequency range. I still like to use the old TechMaster PEB disk (green one) on track 12 because it has such a wide range. The crappy part is sitting in your driveway or some place similar with the music blaring as you climb around on the inside and outside of your vehicle. Take a rag and bunch it up in your hand or just use your bare hand and push on different spots until you notice a rattle disappear. To find all the rattles disks a sweeping bass note is nice also because as the bass moves through different rattles harmonics you will find alot more than you thought you had. Its better than finding them after you think you are finished and put in a new disk that brings them out. There are also disks with 5Hz incremental BASS frequencies starting at 20Hz.

OK so now you found all your rattles, How the heck do you fix them?? Well, there are variety of ways to do this. For plastic pieces that mesh together (like tail light assemblys) I use a spray-on rubber, some people use rubberized undercoatings. You can apply these to the joint and let it cure, you will still be able to get it apart if necessary, clean, and recoat. For cavitys where the whole outside metal is vibrating you can wedge and mount large chunks of rubber between them with silicon or use expanding insulation foam (Great Stuff is one of the brand names) For parts where you have plastic covering over metal I will remove the plastic and apply Dynamat to the metal with a heat gun and put the plastic back on. Pretty much anything you can do to get the piece that is vibrating to either stop moving or stop hitting against the other piece. Hope this helps and happy hunting.

-Ken

 

[Flounder]

My car rattles with bass up high. But, I run my car off road a lot, so I don't think getting the stuff soundproofed just to later have it come loose again is worth it. I figure, turn up the radio. Dead Link Removed

Honestly, rattles from my car come from the housings of the door speakers, from the back cargo area behind the plastic, and from my power trailer brakes controller on the dash. But again, I guess it depends on how much patience the owner has to deal with it. I have a lot of patience, so it doesn't really get to me.

Adam