JonsToy

Like many owners, I've been experiencing some of those pesky rattles that others have been complaining about. Three in particular stand out. The passenger front seat has noticable vibration when the car is moving, causing quite a racket. There's also a rattle coming from the rear view mirror with Homelink, though it seems to be intermittent. And finally, I'm experience a minor, though noticable rattle coming from the upper-right side of the driver's door near the instrument panel.
I haven't addressed the seat problem, yet. But I did determine the rattle from the rear view mirror was caused by my sunglasses moving around in the sunglass holder. Remove the glasses, no rattle. Who would have figured? Maybe we should make this a D.I.Y!
I seriously considered removing the inside panel from the driver's door to see if anything was loose, but I was concerned I might make matters worse by not reinstalling it perfectly. So I figured I'd just live with the noise. But recently, after reading a thread about replacing the Bose tweeters to improve sound quality, I popped the sail panel out in order to see how difficult a replacement would be. Satisfied that I could do it if I really wanted to, I put the sail panel back on. You guessed it... no more rattle!
Much has been said about the hard plastic that was used in the manufacture of the interior parts of this car, and the sail panel is a case in point. It's made of that same hard plastic, has one hard plastic post connection and a hard plastic clip, and sits on top of the hard plastic inside door trim. So whether the rattle was eliminated because the panel is slightly repositioned, or because the post connection is slightly different (looser or tighter) or because the tweeter wire is in a slightly different place, who cares? To remove the sail panel, just roll down the window, grab the inside of the sail panel on the side perpendicular to the window sill, and pull the panel towards the inside of the car. It pops right out.
All I can say is it worked for me. Hope it helps you, too.

rockin

My passenger side seat had a rattle in it. The problem was the wiring harness under the seat. Look under the seat with a flashlight. The wire that was the problem for me is closest to the outside for the car (the door) I used duct tape to hold it because of the hidden location no one will ever see it.

JonsToy

Thanks. I'll give that a look-see.

kromix

can someone show me which is the sail panel so I can go pull it right now....

adrian-1

I've never heard of it called a "sail panel" but it's the part circled in the picture. One of the other wires was loose inside the door panel and taping it down fixed my rattle. Picture included of door panel taken off. Search on how to remove it, it's not that hard.

m2usa

Thanks for your post. I have two of the same annoying rattles. The one that is bugging me the most is the Homelink Mirror buzz/rattle. I'm not sure if you'll see this older thread, but are you saying that your glasses actually caused the mirror to rattle, or it was simply your glasses rattling around causing the noise?

JonsToy

It was my glasses rattling around in the compartment that was making the noise. The glasses did not cause the mirror to rattle.