How to make the auto shift selector quiet:

I have been annoyed by my center consoles auto shifter cover squeaking for ages now, I lined the plastic inside with felt, sprayed it with Silicon spray, widened the clips inside and it hasn't worked. It never made sense.
So today on my hands and knees I scoped that muther real close and tight. With eyeball to plastic, ear to console I prodded and pushed and moved that thing around and noticed, ladies and gentlemen. That the hole around the auto selectors metal shaft, which is connected to the moving plastic strip under the cover that highlights the gear selected, isn't big enough. Especially in 3rd, 2nd and 1st, when the selector shaft is at such an angle, the edge of the small plastic hole jams up against the selector shaft and rubs making that awful plastic against plastic noise, especially over bumpy roads.
Fix. Removed gear selector handle/button, bolt, then removed auto's cover plate, and made the hole a little larger. She is very quiet now, and I can actually hear the sound of the tires over bumps now. For now at least anyway, until the new squeaks arrive...



The fuse box lid:

Another quick fix is the fuse box lid. Some of these can get noisy after a while. Electrical tape around bottom tabs that go into the slots, to bulken it up and stop it moving around. The tape is hidden inside when it's closed.

Another location for noise there is inside the fuse box right at the edge hard left, where the board the relays are on meets the lower dash. If you grab the base of the dash around there and move it side to side, you can get a horrible deep squeak there, and see that everything moves around quite a bit. The fix. Jamming a few headless match sticks into the corner between relay board and dash. Then Silicon spray between all the tiny dash tabs that hold the fuse and relay boards in place.

While you have the fuse box lid off. Remove the aircon flow adjuster set into the corner of the dash. And with a long plastic tube connected to your Silicon spray can, looking inside the dash through the hole of the air-con flow adjuster, spray the area's between where the vinyl top part of the dash, rubs up against the lower plastic part of the dash. Try and seperate the edges of the upper and lower parts of the dash by gently applying pressure where these halves meet. That way the Silicon spray will get right in between these edges where a lot noise occurs. Do the outside of these edges too. Wiping excess away with a damp cloth.

Carefully Silicon spray the edges and the corner of the speedo housing inside the dash while your in there, spray the area where the speedo meets the dash, and above it, as the plastic of the speed box rubs against the dash at the rear.

It's pedantic I know, but it works.



Remove and install the air-con outlet cover the right way:

Sometimes when the passenger side dash air-flow controller assy. is removed, to expose the dash's interior air duct, and then re-inserted back into the air duct again, sometimes the outer air flow assy. and box doesn't reccess and click back into the interior air duct piping, instead just pushing the black plastic duct furthur back and up into the dash.
So as the outside air-flow controller clicks back into place in the dash right, it pushes the duct back, instead of neatly reccessing inside and the duct sitting around air-flow assy.
Then what happens of course, when going over bumps and things, the interior duct comes into contact with parts of the inside of the dash. Making some pretty horrible noises.

If it is this, and you own an EF Series II with passenger side air-bag. Remove air-bag cover on the dash, remove air-bag assy., following the correct procedure in the manual. Remove the air-flow assy. again, Silicon spray the insides of the air duct where the air-flow box comes into contact, with one hand through the air-bag cover hole in the dash, hold the duct firmly in place as you insert the air-flow controller back into place. Making sure it clicks back into place within the duct.


Other places to look at are:

- Behind stereo/ashtray fascia, the steel assbly for the stereo can come into contact with a shard that seems to come out from the firewall. This can create a loud vibration.

- Broken dash tabs, especially in the corners. A broken drivers side tab can make a squeak when going over sharp bumps and indualtions, the sound is relative and can sound like it coming from around the L.H.S air-con outlet.

- Noises near or behind the cluster. Can be caused by 1 or more broken tabs in the steering wheel cover/shrouds. Especially when there lose or coming apart.

- Front and rear doors can move around when going over large sharp bumps. Maybe caused by squashed or damaged rubber door or body surrounds. I might try renewing one and seeing what happens. But Silicon can quieten it down for a couple of months at a time.

- Plastic and metal parts can rattle around behind the door skins. Tape any plastic parts securely to the door frame and use a caulking gun in areas to dampen noise.

- Interior door skins can rub up agains the metal frame of the doors. Especially with stripped screws causing it to come aprt slightly. Use self sticking felt pad in areas that make noise in between cover and door frame.

- Rear interior plastic window lining or trim peices that have stripped screws. They can rattle inside the car. Secure with new screws.


Justs the tip of the ice berg guys!

I got that rattle too, 'cept now when I turn the stezza up, more rattles appear