Anyone have a rattle coming from........

khtso

One rattle I discovered that could be common comes from under one of the trim pieces on the hatch lid. The rear panel has a large rectangular metal piece underneath it and they tended to vibrate against one another. It was weird because I checked all the panels with the hatch open and didn't notice anything, but one day while the car was idle I heard it, jumped back into the hatch and felt around and noticed it. It had been driving me CRAZY!!! I practically wanted to throw the car out. Anyway, I pulled off that rear hatch door trim piece (about 13 push fasteners that you can just pry off) and then got a piece of foam and double side-taped it to the metal piece. That rattle disappeared. There are still a few minor, soft rattles that occur over bumps sometimes, but once again, I think it has to do with pieces under the rear hatch door trim pieces. One day I'll tear all 4 pieces off and insulate them.

rackley

I hunted a rattle/squeak back there for about three weeks, it was driving me absolutely crazy. It wound up being the tail brake light - tightening the nut (near that suspended weight) finally stopped the squeaking. But I had to tighten it 3x, until it almost seemed like it was going to break the plastic, before the squeak finally stopped.

ZCarGo

I went on a road trip. I thought everything was taken care of since I hadn't heard much of a rattle until I backed out of my driveway the morning I left on a 600 mile road trip. Rattled the whole damn way.

The first thing I did when I got home was to rip off the plastic covers and try to find the real source. Well, it turns out that it was a combination of things that center around the third brake light. The metal is thin around this area and when you press on the internal pieces (through the holes), I could recreate the noise...good start. Like you, I ended up settling in on the brake light and have come to the conclusion it's really lame how they have attached it to the hatch. As I pushed on the brake light from the inside, I could recreate the noise. It appeared to be fastened as tight as it could be. In fact, once I loosened the nut, the bolt just flopped around and didn't even appear to be attached to the brake light. I couldn't see how it was attached because I didn't have the right driver to remove the hatch hook.

There are two plastic posts that stick through the metal on the hatch. Nissan has put felt around the posts to prevent them from rubbing on the metal. I did move these around the last time I was looking for rattles and apparently settled the light enough to make me think I had fixed the problem. A few days and bumps later, the rattle was back. I ended up wrapping these posts with a foam tape so they don't move and are solid in the holes. This seems to have resolved the problem. The best thing to do when I have more time is to secure the damn tail light, which is the major source of the problem. The other fixes I have done were contributing, but turns out only to a small degree.

For those who think this is a minor issue, I would bet you'd want to dump your car for a civic if you had to deal with this rattle. It's nothing a radio can cover up. It's nowhere close to the high pitched hum others have complained about, which I couldn't hear very well do to the rattling. So perhaps the rattle is a good way to mask the hum.

-ZCarGo-

jakoye

That might be the first U2 allusion in this forum.

In that spirit, as far as your purchase of a Z goes, I will follow!

Good job on tracking down these rattles. Hopefully it won't happen to me, but I'll know which thread to reference if it does.

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