Obsession with rattles - PartII

pburns

OK, time to revisit this problem...

Basically, what I referred to in my original post as an almost 'inperceptible' rattle in my Legacy has steadily gotten worse. And that's not just my imagination - I've had passangers in the car who initially thought I was exaggerating and they've come around completely to agreeing there is a problem.

Like all the best creaks/rattles it is not present all the time however. It is usually at it's worst when the car has been standing in the hot sun all day (driving home from work usually) when it creaks like a 120,000 mile FIAT Punto. In the cold evening air (past 9 o'clock these summer evenings) it improves hugely, I can barely hear it. I thought I had this formula down pat for when I instructed the dealer what to look for but yesterday was roasting and the car behaved perfectly:mad:... I've tried taking everything out of the boot, re-arranging them etc., all to no avail.

I told the dealer about the problem at the 1600km service and they didn't even bother their arse taking it out for a drive. Part of the problem is that you don't always get to speak directly to the service guy when you bring in your car and the message gets filtered down from reception by the time it reaches the guys working on your car. :mad:
They also failed to fill in the service log and left the interior smelling of cigarette smoke but that's by-the-by:rolleyes:.

What's really galling is that otherwise the car is...fantastic. The diesel engine is sweet as a nut and thrives in the mid-range band. It even sounds fantastic - and it's a diesel! Grip into and out of corners is prodigious. There is another Legacy owner on these boards (245) who has been a great help to me over the last week or two, checking different things. His car is tight as a nut by all accounts. Nor is there a great deal of evidence online to suggest this is a common problem. Guess the worker back in Japan finishing off my boot on a Friday afternoon was daydreaming about the cute girl he was gonna meet in a karaoke bar that night (shameless stereotyping:o)

I'll be going back to the dealer this week. Time is a scarce commodity, I don't have a great deal of it to be spending on **** like this. They have promised (grudgingly) to take the car in for a full day and investigate it more thoroughly. I guess chasing down rattles is a bit of a black art and they're not relishing the prospect. Tough ****.

At this stage though the experience of buying a great car has been ruined. Dunno if this is gonna be happy-ever-after...

bazz26

Be very careful about letting a garage try and fix a rattle, in my experience they will let the local apprentice monkey helper look at it as this job is below the regular qualified folks. You could end up with a worse rattle or more than one than you went in with.

Happened to me before and I just learned to live with it and turned up the stereo.

S.I.R

hmm, what kinda rattle is it ?? plastic rattle, metal rattle or both ??


normally a easy fix...

JoeA3

bazz26 wrote: »

Be very careful about letting a garage try and fix a rattle, in my experience they will let the local apprentice monkey helper look at it as this job is below the regular qualified folks. You could end up with a worse rattle or more than one than you went in with.

Happened to me before and I just learned to live with it and turned up the stereo.

+1. I also learned the hard way... screw driver marks, broken trim - Monkeys! Dealers are generally hopeless at resolving stuff like this in my experience.

The problem you're having is that plastics expand/contract depending on temperature, so your rattle is coming and going depending on temp... I also find that rattles/squeeks are much less apparent on wet days! Another problem is that rattles often sound like they are coming from a different place than where they actually are.

Try the rear seat catches and/or parcel shelf, assuming your rear seats fold flat.