Vibrating noises while I am driving drive me nuts. It’s as simple as that.
I got my Rover 75 less than a year ago, and the excitement of driving an elegant classy car somehow made me ignore at first the abundant rattles I heard everywhere while I drove (especially behing the passenger airbag), yet I reached a point where I literally went mad and occasionally violently hammered everywhere on the fascia hoping to make the noise stop, but also, let’s be honest, to ease my nerves against the bad machine.
I must thank MikeM from the MG-Rover forums for the written tutorial that helped me through the procedure of solving this problem, and inspired me to make this visual anti-rattle guide.
This glovebox has already been removed, anyway let's assume it isn't: you have to remove the seven torx screws shown in the red circles, the bottom three are under the mat and you have to forcefully unglue it from the floor of the box to make them show. Also, it is advisable to act on the green circled hinges to let the lid slide all the way down.This is just a closeup of the hinge where you need to press the little plastic thing to let it slide further down; do it for both of the hinges.This is the empty socket left after you removed the glovebox, circled in green is the power plug for the glovebox lighting, which you need to unplug before completely pulling out the glovebox; what you're looking for is situated beneath the upper front of the fascia, and is accessible by looking from beneath in the direction of the arrow.Here is your peace hinderer: the BCU (body control unit, even if on the box it's called "Control Unit Body"); cicled in green is the bolt that fixes the box to the metal panel beneath it, what happens is that the tip of the bolt is very very close to that tubular metal frame you can notice, and at around 2k RPM it vibrates rattling against it generating the noise, in the area ponted by the red arrow, below that metal panel.You need something to interpose between the two metal rattling objects to silence them; anything could be good, really, but my choice fell on this packaging material that I wisely saved months ago.I took some 10cm of that soft plastic strip, folded it in two, pulled down the metal plate so there was enough space between screw and tubular frame, and slided the insulator between the two, then released the assemply that simply went lying over the plastic; job done, no more vibrations!Sinbce I was on it, I decided to work on some rattling I got from the underpanel of the fascia over the speedometer. Circled in red are the two screws you need to remove in order to detach the plastic panel, and the green arrows point to the areas where the rattling was apparently originated.I used most of the remaining packaging plastic to create some sort of cushion around the three catches that grapple inside the fascia (indicated by the green arrows). I stabilized the two ends with some insulating tape. Put everything back together, and rattles in that area will be gone as well!
The headquarters of Ephestione, online since 2001 ______________________________ ________________ _________________ Il quartier generale di Ephestione, online dal 2001
