Rattles
 

Hi All,

Do you guys have much rattles in your 8s? I have rattles coming from everywhere: door, passenger seat, rear speakers, dash board. They drive me nuts and don't know how to get rid of them. I only have 3700 miles on my car and it will be 6 months old tomorrow. I would have expected a lot less rattle or no rattle at all from a 30k+ car.

I have searched the forum for related discussion and found a couple of threads. So I checked out all the smaller things (like rear view mirror) that have been mentioned but non of them helped.

When I had it in for the airbag recall I had them checked out but of course after the car having sat in the warm shop room the rattles disappeared and I could not show them to the technician.

What would you guys suggest I do? Also, am I alone with an exceptionally rattly (is this a word?) 8 or are these common issues?

Thanks for your input and happy 8ing!
Erik

I have some too : both front door b-pillars, rear right speaker, at the junction of the steering column with the dashboard. They keep on going away and coming back.
The speaker one has gone now that I pushed and slammed its plastic cover.
Dealers have a pretty bad record of dealing with rattles. I don't know how I'm going to deal with it myself.

I've had one in my driver side window and I took it to the dealer and they fixed it no probs. but if you get it everywhere I guess the only thing to do is keep bugging your dealer and try it get them all before your warrenty runs out...

Unfortunately, unless it's something REALLY bad and also very obvious, dealers won't help you much with rattles.
As bad as it sounds, the only thing you can do is to try to fix them yourself. No dealer will care about these nearly as much as you do.
They will claim that they could not reproduce the problem or something similar EVERY single time they can - nobody likes to deal with such issues. They are laborous to pinpoint and often very hard to fix. Time-consuming too.

on eof the cars I own is a lexus gs300. at lexus supposedly they look into rattles very seriously. guess what? they don't . I hav etaken the gas to the dealer several times for rattles in the rear around the spealer areas and they hav elooked at them. they even hav ea gadjet to tell them were te rattles are coming from and they adress them and they coem back. I think it's more of a luck thing. you have them and they go away. others have them and they stay. I don't think the mazda dealer will do much about them. they may keep your car for a few hours or a couple of days and tell you they did. But I hardly believe they look at the issue with any deliberation.

Jon lucked up, he had a major squeaky-type rattle in his dash. It sounded as if it was behind the radio. He took it in and an hour later, they had it fixed. No more squeak. :)

yes everytime they will say they cannot duplicate the problem- TO ME IT IS BULLSHIT REALLY!!!! I have a few other cars and they don't rattle AT ALL!!! much less the rattle factory I have going on in my 8- there isn't even 4 thousand miles and I have to have my radio so cranked I can no longer hear the sweet sweet rotary :( the b-pillar driver's side window by the vent thing seems to be quite commen and they should fix it- but again EVERYTIME I have it in there they say they could not duplicate it- .........to be honest if it continues I really might consider getting rid of her :( I know I know it is sad but it is the truth that those rattle DRIVE ME CRAZY!!!!!! if this was a neon or something I would pry learn to live with it- but this is not a neon!!! (unless you ask IKE :)

Kain, why not take a mini-recorder in the car? This way, you can just play it to the dealer and you can say the noise is duplicated?

I really think it has to do with the dealership's service dept. and how much time they want to invest in it. If you get desperate, I know I would buy the manual and learn to fix it myself! :D

I had an intermittent rattle somewhere in the dash, to the right of the steering wheel. When I installed the 6-disk changer last week (thanks again to all for the great DIY thread), I found that the elusive retaining bolt on the side of the radio/head unit wasn't even finger tight.

Tightened it up when I reinstalled everything... rattle is gone. May have been something else in there than got accidentally adjusted during the install, but I really suspect it was related to the loose bolt. May want to check it.

I've had my car two weeks tomorrow, and it's been smooth sailing...

"Kain, why not take a mini-recorder in the car? This way, you can just play it to the dealer and you can say the noise is duplicated?
"

This is a really good idea-!!!!


actually I might videotape it with the audio- then they can watch the tape and see AND hear where each rattle is coming from. I don't want to sound all whiney or anyhting- I do accept little rattles as facts of life- but when I have to have the music sooo loud that I can not hear the engine or sirens---this is too much :)

some do
 

The reason why they have so much rattles is because they were mostly built from plastic, and have a high frequency engine to run it.
Although if you take it into the dealer, I got all my rattles fixed at no charge.

I have rattles on both back doors... It happens on rough asphalt (very common around here in Washington State) around 30 mph... Really annoying. It seems to be related to the red piece (I have red interior) support. I had a friend sitting in the back and the rattle would stop if he pushed the red part of the door.
Did anyone have something similar and got it solved?? Any hope? The dealer came with the traditional "we couldn't find anything wrong" answer...
Another thing (I might be picky, but that's just the beginning!): my break pedal makes a weird hissing noise when I step on it. It's not loud or anything but I happened to notice that only after 2 months with the car. Being the picky guy I am, it's very unlike that the noise was there before and went unoticed, but I might be wrong. Is that normal? Anyone else hears that?

I have rattles when driving over cobblestones (we have lots of them here). It's somewhere beneath the car, could be the exhaust suspension.

You might like to check the steel backing plates behind the brake discs. These are rather lightweight and can resonate on vibrating surfaces like you describe.

I'll have a look at them, thanks!