Interior Squeak and Rattle issues solved

[Bill D]

My only complaint with my newly purchased 2012 Tahoe to date has been its Interior plastic on plastic and plastic on steel "Itching" over small bumps, road irregularities and right hand turns. Perhaps it wouldn't be noticeable to most, my wife claims she didn't hear the rattles. However, being a former automotive Interiors engineer, there is nothing that grates on me more than squeaks and rattles. I cant remember if Arlington assembly has a squeak and rattle test track or not, but if they did when they built my truck it definitely missed the check.

My goal was to get the vehicle Mercedes squeak and rattle quiet, or at the very least as quiet as a 2018 Suburban I recently rented. I collected my tools and set off to attain the whisper quiet cabin yesterday morning. Total time start to finish 1 hour. Materials: Adhesive Backed 7/8 X 5/8" High Density Foam, Felt flocking strips, which I cut to size and 1 mm 3M Acrylic Foam Tape, Knife. These are the same materials used in assembly plants and at the Interior trim and Instrument Panel suppliers to cover up their assembly part to part dimensional and body shop "Sins" that are the parents of squeaks and rattles.


Here's the materials:


To get started, move across the top of each door trim panel. This belt line door trim panel area was fully reinforced on the GMT 800 trim panels, but due to cost cutting is made flimsy and cheap on the 900's. If your truck is like mine you will likely have 1/4 to 1/2" mouse holes at the front and rear edges where the trim panel meets with the door sheet metal / window. Not good for Squeaks and Rattles. Remove a High density foam square, compress it and push it into each of the mouse holes, adhesive side to the metal. Installing this foam in the mouse holes on both ends of the panel gently pushes the trim panel away from the metal and prevents any itching or resonating of the door panel against the sheet metal.



Next move down around the perimeter of the door trim panel; tapping gently every couple inches to detect any gaps or looseness that manifests in rattles. For small gaps, less than 1 mm use the adhesive felt flocking squares and slide it between the trim panel and the sheet metal. I used a leather-man knife to pull the panel out to fit in the felt. For larger gaps use the 1mm 3M tape, its tricky to do with it being double sided, but the knife blade helps. Press the trim firmly against the tape. Rattle stopped.










Dont forget to tap around the "shark fins" on both front doors, which was a huge source of a rattle on my passenger door. One of the plastic attachment points for the spring clip had cracked off, so I used some JB weld to repair it and pushed it back on, and put some felt at the corners





Continue with the same approach across the interior. Take special note around the rear cabin trim quarter trim panels, hatch panels and the plastic covers on the second row seats where they latch to the floor.


Finally, my cup holder was rattling ever so slightly over bumps, and a couple of felt strips completely stopped the rattles.




Results? All interior squeaks and rattles are gone. Its particularly noticeable at slow speeds on irregular road surfaces, and Im extremely pleased with the results. Will need to spend a couple of minutes with an a razor trimming off the excess that overhangs in a couple of places to get a professional result.

Wishing you all a squeak and rattle free new year!

 

[Doubeleive]

hmm, mine came out of Texas only thing that has been annoying was the rear drivers side door lock tip I just pulled it off put some tape on the metal rod and put the tip back on, rattle gone.

 

[BourbonNcigars]

I've seen more rattling GM products than non-rattling ones, but it's all subjective. Like the OP, my wife is impervious to irritating sounds (unless it's me). My current 2010 sounded like a robot ate a box of rocks until I did similar fixes as above. Still resonates over really bad roads. On the wrong surface my interior can turn into what I imagine a tornado hitting a Lego factory sounds like.

One friend has a 2017 Silverado and it's dead silent (especially quiet when the transmission shat itself at 48K miles).

 

[08HoeCD]

@Fosscore
@iamdub

Be advised

 

[iamdub]

Good work! This is part of my plans when I pop off the door panels to refresh the grease in the window regulators and stick on some sound deadener. I haven't ordered a bag of new door panel clips or the adhesive-backed felt yet. But I'm going balls-out on it when I finally dive in.

The fact that I only drive it on the weekends keeps my sanity cuz I hear EVERY little click, squeak and chirp like it's amplified.

I may install my subwoofer first cuz a trick I used to do in my other cars was to play various bass notes from a tuning program and address each part as it rattled. Different parts and areas resonated at different frequencies. This was very effective and I didn't have to keep finding rough roads, rumble strips or reflectors.

 

[BourbonNcigars]

Something that works good for this (in my experience since rattles drive me crazy) is those 2x2 mats they sell for kids to play on or work out rooms. They interlink with each other to cover the floor. The cheap ones, not the good ones. The foam is firm but still compresses enough to wedge in somewhere and it's already about the right thickness for many applications to stop rattles. Also the soft side of industrial strength velcro. I have three little pieces in my console latch to stop the noise there. Among other places.

 

[avalonandl]

My RR door lock tip rattles in the escutheon on dirt roads... need some thin one sided flocking tape. I just ordered it on Amazonian

 

[Rocket Man]

Maybe turn some music on....

 

[Bill D]

My RR door lock tip rattles in the escutheon on dirt roads... need some thin one sided flocking tape. I just ordered it on Amazonian

Its the way they do it at Arlington Assembly when a "Rattler" comes back to the repair line from the Squeak and Rattle track!

 

[avalonandl]

My Denali was built at Arlington.

I ordered Flocking tape.