Has anyone had their trunk lid rattle really bad when driving around with the all the rear trim removed? I'm looking to see if this is normal or not.

I removed all the trunk trim panels except for the one on the trunk lid and didn't hear any rattles. After a week I removed the rear seats, rear deck trim, C-pillar trim and trunk lid trim. The trunk lid now rattles REALLY loud. Its bouncing whenever I hit any sort of little bump in the road and bangs against the latch (even the slightest road variations cause it to bounce around...not just larger bumps). I turned the trunk lid bumpstops a little over 1 complete turn out and it made the condition better, but it still does it fairly often. I also put the center plastic trunk trim in because I saw a couple other non-adjustable rubber bumpers which rest against this piece. This didn't help.

Any thoughts? It is really loud and obnoxious. The only thing I noticed is that air pressure builds up in the car with the windows / sunroof open in certain positions...you can hear a very low pitched hum as air resonates in the trunk. I'm not sure if the air has something to do with it...the rattle gets a little worse when any of the windows are cracked open.

 

There is a very easy way to adjust this. When you open the trunk from the outside of the car (using the keyless entry), you will see two rubber stoppers that are located on the inside of the trunk. It sits on the inside of the trunk. Open the trunk door all the way, and you will see them located on the right and left side. They are referred to as "rubber nipples". They are there for the reason of preventing any rattling from occurring caused by the trunk lid. What you can do is loosen those to the maximum, which will cause the trunk to always be resting on those rubber stoppers, so that when you go over bumps, the trunk will bounce up, and then when it falls, will be hitting those rubber stoppers, causing little to no rattling. I had this problem for over a year, and finally I got so tired of acura bitching me around, I went into the service department and demanded I go on a road test with a mechanic. Sure enough, when we were on the road test, the trunk was rattling like a mother fucker. Anyways, we stopped on some side street, I popped the trunk, and I watched him adjust the levels on these rubber nipples. I took the same route back to the dealership, where I was able to reproduce the problem, and all the rattling was gone. I even left the little trap door to the trunk opened from inside the car, so I could definitely make sure the noise was gone. Until this day, I have 0 rattles from the trunk...unless of course I have something inside the trunk that's rattling, but nothing is caused by a physical part on the car.

 

also check the plastic seperator between the two torsion bars that hold up the trunk.it was rattling on mine. If thats it just wrap a tye wrap around it

 

SC354 - I mentioned that I did adjust those rubber stoppers...they did help a little, but it still rattles alot. I have them turned out as far as they really can go (i.e. if I turn them out a 1/2 turn farther, they will fall out of the trunk lid). I can't tell if you were suggesting to turn them out or turn them in though. I turned them out all the way which makes the lid "tighter" against the trunk opening.

Yeild2S - I also did check the torsion bars. They don't appear to be causing the problem. I tucked a towel around them to make sure they weren't causing the problem. Its definitely the trunk lid bouncing and the noise is coming from the latch assy.

 

You can also lower the latch catch ITSELF. Not the portion on center of the trunk lid, but the catch on the inside of the trunk. There are just a couple of bolts - loosen, drop a quarter inch or so, tighten. This is what the dealer had to do for me - took care of the problem instantly.

 

Whoopdidoo - that sounds exactly what I need to do. Wasn't sure if that latch was adjustable. Thanks for letting me know!