A Simple Guide To Stopping Rattles In Your Car

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If you are the proud owner of a volvo that is a few years old, and especially if you, like me, is an owner of an 850 wagon, you can probably relate to the following symptoms:

1. When going over bumps, your doors and esecially the tailgate, sounds like they are about to rattle right off the car or into a million bits and pieces

2. when the speakers hit a midbass note, you hear an annoying rattle, forcing you to turn down the volume.

3. while the car seems pretty quiet from the ground up, you hear wind noise and tire/road noise quite a bit coming from the door area.

Well, if you exhibit any or all of these problems, dampening is the answer This simple guide will provide instructions and a few quick photos to help you dampen your doors and tail gate.

Okay, lets get started:

here is what you need:

star screw driver set

philips head screw driver

panel popper (or flat head screw driver)

dampening material (i would suggest not to get regular dynamat, due to their thickness and inflexibility, instead, go for thinner, alum. foil backed material, such as dynamat ultra, peel and seal, whcih is what i used, or other similar dampening material)

wooden roller is a plus

about 3-4 hours of your time if you plan to do all four doors and tailgate and its your first time taking your door apart.

okay...now onto the instructions:

1. locate four star screws along the bottom edge of the door panel, remove them

2. locate one small philips screw on the front edge of the door panel, remove

3. pull out the door latch handle (pull straing up on the plastic tab)

4. take the panel remover, and pop out the thin strip of leather behind the speaker grille , most likely, unless you are very lucky, you will see that the clips that hold this piece to the door have remained stuck in the door, I would suggest replacing these crappy clipse with some stronger ones you can find at the local autoparts store. or thin velcro will also do.

5. once this leather piece is out, remove two goldish star screws from the panel

6. pop out the speaker grille and remove the speaker from the plastic house, disonnect the wires from the back of hte speakre.

7. grab the door firmly and give it a tug straing up, you will feel the clips release, continue pulling straight up on the door and remove the door outter panel and set it aside...right now, would be good time to check all the screws, bolts in your door and tighten any ones that may hve come loose, i found quite a few bolts that were loose inside my door cuasing rattles..

you should be staring at something like this:

8. take your dampening material and cut it into relatively small strips, and start applying them to any bare metal surface you see. a wooden roller should be used to press the dampening down. becareful not to dampen over any moving parts (door release lever, door lock lever...etc...and when you dampen over holes that screws would go in, remember to mark their location by sticking a screw driver through the hole so it shows up on the dampening. be patient, somtimes, you may need to cut the dampening into pretty small pieces to get at those rather tricky spots. the most important things to dampen are the surfaces around the speaker, and where you see plastic or rubber fittings on the door insetad of just metal, such as the plastic backing piecebehind the door pocket. be sure to dampen over these non metal parts. if you are using very thin material, and you really want the door DEAD, you can use two or even three layers. but even one layer will make a huge difference...

once you have gone over most of the surfaces good, it should look something like this:

9. reattach the door, reverse of the step before, and move onto the next door. the front and rear door are very similar, with the exception of the power window switch whcih needs to be popped out and disconnected.

now, the tail gate.

1. take a flat head screw driver and wedge it under the lower part of the inside trunk release handle trim piece, and then push the housing up, you will hear clips pop and the you can take the trim piece out.

2. take a panel popper or screw driver, carfully put it under the tailgate cover panel and pop the clips holding the panel out, there should be 4 of them along the bottom edge and a similar number along the top edge. also, pop out the clips around the third brake light housing (if you have an earler wagon modle with the lower third brake light like me) becareful, if you are giving things a firm wedge, and you see the panel bending but the clips are not popping, dont force the issue, peak inside the panel to see where the clips are, and then try again. once you disengage all the clips surrounding the edge of the tailgate trim panel, yon can pop out this big piece and set it aside. what you will end up is something like this:

now, i found in my car there are two main sources of rattling. the first is that over the years, due to slam after slam of the tailgate, many of hte plastic clips or parts inside the door panel has broken loose and is just rattling around the door. the second piece that rattled a lot was the rear wind shield wiper motor housing. a good procedure would be to take your fist and bang on the tailgate panel, and you can tell where the rattles are coming from.

3. if you hear something that sounds like loose parts rattling inside the door, its probably stock behind the windshield wiper motor mousing. take out the 5 or 6 bolts and now you can slide the motor housing around a bit, when I did this, four plastic clips from god knows what came fallking out of the tailgate, no wonder my tailgate rattled so badly. basically inspect any thing that is causing a lot of rattle, there are some platsic pieces that really surves no useful purpose and they may hve cracked or broken loose and cuasing a lot of the rattles, if you find any of these pieces, remove them.

4. now just like the door, start dampening the tail gate. i first stuck a bunch of dampening on the outtter tailgate panel through the holes in the inner tail gate panel. then, i dampened the inner piece completely, sealing off those holes. i paid special attention to the windshield wiper motor assembly, putting dampening on most of its parts, but again, besure that you are not impeding the movement of any moving parts (for example, you can dampen the wiper linckage which moves, but dont put dampening on that linkage AND another non moving surface)...also, remember to mark and punch through any holes that will later be used when reattaching the trim panel.

once you are done, it should look like this:

now, reattach the interior tailgate trim panel and the tailgate latch trim piece...and you are done.

:)

the results should be instantly noticable when driving down the road. my improvements are as follows:

1. go over bumps, i no longer hear ANY rattle coming from the tailgate, the car feel much more solid, like a new car sound

2. interior noise has gone down quite a bit, estimated 2-3 db.

3. i can turn the speakers way up with out rattles coming from the door...before i can go up to volume 18 or so on a bassy techno song, now, I can go clear past 25 with out hearing ANY rattles.

4. door and tailgate closes with a much more resounding THUD

so...i think in general, this is a relatively easy fix that makes a significant difference to your daily driving experience, total cost, if you use peel and seal for example, should be about 30-60 bucks(depending on how many layers you put down), provided you have the tools already.

qusetions? comments? make a post I apologize beforehand for any misspellings hehhe

b