Newmanium

Perhaps there are threads already talking about this, but I haven't seen them - it's just an FYI.

I just got an '08 TSX that has a few buzzing panels in the driver and passenger side that have been driving me nuts. They happen on certain roads, and on certain songs. I want the dealership to take a look at them, but I wasn't very confident that they would fix them.

Perhaps this is common knowledge to everybody else, but I finally found a test tone CD off the internet for free that you can run in your car, to help check for rattles. You can download the MP3s from here:

http://www.realtraps.com/test-cd.htm

I thought it was pretty slick, 70-79 and 80-89 really get things rattling, and 40-49 buzzes the entire back seat, lol, it's crazy. I don't expect the dealer to fix every possible buzz, but this works great for reproducing some of the more constant ones. Now I can tell if the dealer has fixed the rattles by spending 1 minute with him in the car after the appointment.

That's all, don't bite my head off if this is completely obvious to everybody else . Other than this, and slightly excessive road noise, I love the car!

Castles_Saloon

The tone cd's are very helpful for finding peaks and nulls in response. Looks like that cd is a good one. If you want any particular sine or combination of sine waves, pink, white noise etc., you make your own using this handy little application:
http://www.nch.com.au/tonegen/


I think 40-49 refers to Hz? If so, then yes , the stock amp has a large peak at ~50Hz. that could rattle all kinds of stuff.

If you have access to alldata, there are service bulletins on how to fix door and a-pillar rattles. Its pretty easy to pop off the door panels if you want to add your own dampening. I'd add something to kill the door metal resonating too such as dynamat, brown bead, ram audio bxt. Cabin gets a bit quieter.

It is a great car... a little love and care and it gets even better!

jiggaman

thanks for this! i was actually planning on trying to find one of these cds. i've put raamat bxt in my doors and a layer of ensolite and that definately helped. problem is that lots of the buzzes i get i think come from teh locking mechanisms themselves which are trickier.

i put dynamat in the rear deck and still have some rattles there too. i wish i put a layer of ensolite when i had it apart but i didn't know about that product at the time. its a PITA getting that rear deck off!!!

Castles_Saloon

in terms of damping vibrations, if you have more bass and there's any license plate rattle, a little ensolite glued to the perimeter of the plate works well. if you have a license plate cover, thats just begging to rattle too.