xluben
10+ year member
CarAudio.com Veteran
Well, I finally figured out what was causing my trunk to rattle very loudly, but I have no idea what it's actual purpose is. From the looks of it, this thing seems perfect for causing really loud rattling noise, when submitted to fairly loud, fairly low frequencies. I have a test tone CD that has tracks in 5Hz increments and I would only get rattling at 35Hz. My HU is set to max out the gains of my amps at about 25/35 (I think Alpine's go up to 35), and at 35Hz I would get no rattling at 21/35 volume and very loud rattling at 22/35! I think this thing only rattled on about 1 in 10 songs, but when it did it was very annoying and almost unlistenable.
I have done some weather stripping in my trunk (all the way around the seal and around the tail lights), and I have also lowered the latch so the trunk closes very tightly. These things cured all rattling except in the somewhat rare, previously mentioned case. For a while I have been at a loss to what was causing it. I had decided that it was the two layers of sheet metal resonating and hitting each other, because there's about 1/8" between them (but they seem very stiff), so I was thinking of using Great Stuff, but I wasn't looking forward to the mess and the area that needed to be filled was very tiny and I'm sure hard to work with.
Then I noticed a snap in plastic moulding on the underside of the trunk lid. It was about 8" wide x 2" deep x 2" tall. It was in pretty loose, so I figured it was causing some rattling. I popped it out and, to my dismay, the rattling was still there //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/frown.gif.a3531fa0534503350665a1e957861287.gif There was something under the plastic cover, but I wasn't sure what it was. Today I unbolted it and out came this:
VERY Large Pics!:
Medium Pics:
It's pretty much a chunk of metal inbetween a u-shaped piece of metal and a straight piece of metal, all bolted into a hole on the underside of my trunk lid. The piece of metal is very dense and probably weighs about 2 lbs. It's got two bands of rubber around it (one on each end, can be seen in pics), and it's suspended between the pieces of metal by rubber on both ends (can also be seen in pics).
What is this thing and why is it in my trunk?!?!
Oh yeah, after I took it out, all (loud) rattling is gone.
I have done some weather stripping in my trunk (all the way around the seal and around the tail lights), and I have also lowered the latch so the trunk closes very tightly. These things cured all rattling except in the somewhat rare, previously mentioned case. For a while I have been at a loss to what was causing it. I had decided that it was the two layers of sheet metal resonating and hitting each other, because there's about 1/8" between them (but they seem very stiff), so I was thinking of using Great Stuff, but I wasn't looking forward to the mess and the area that needed to be filled was very tiny and I'm sure hard to work with.
Then I noticed a snap in plastic moulding on the underside of the trunk lid. It was about 8" wide x 2" deep x 2" tall. It was in pretty loose, so I figured it was causing some rattling. I popped it out and, to my dismay, the rattling was still there //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/frown.gif.a3531fa0534503350665a1e957861287.gif There was something under the plastic cover, but I wasn't sure what it was. Today I unbolted it and out came this:
VERY Large Pics!:
Medium Pics:
It's pretty much a chunk of metal inbetween a u-shaped piece of metal and a straight piece of metal, all bolted into a hole on the underside of my trunk lid. The piece of metal is very dense and probably weighs about 2 lbs. It's got two bands of rubber around it (one on each end, can be seen in pics), and it's suspended between the pieces of metal by rubber on both ends (can also be seen in pics).
What is this thing and why is it in my trunk?!?!
Oh yeah, after I took it out, all (loud) rattling is gone.
