740 turbo, 1990, rattle under hood

willwebster · Post by **willwebster** » 09 Sep 2009, 17:33

Hi.
My 1990 740 turbo wagon has recently developed a rattle. The car has around 200,000 miles on it. It occurs between the speeds of roughly 15 and 60 mph. Accelerating, Braking, coasting, air conditioning, and the gear its in don't change the rattling in any noticeable way. The rattle is off and on. It sounds like metal rattling around metal. It ranges from light bell like sounds, to constant rattling, to nearly screeching. It seems to be coming from just in front of the dashboard, under the hood. I am curious how to fix this myself with minimum cost. Any ideas will help.

Thanks, Will Webster

DeRail · Post by **DeRail** » 11 Sep 2009, 21:57

Hi Will, welcome to MVS

I know I had a pretty annoying rattle coming in the dash that I couldn't really find for a while. I had taken the screws out, fixed what I needed to behind the ashtray and screwed it all back in. Apparently in the process the radio cluster moved down on one side ever so slightly and was causing a rattle 20mph and up, it was whenever it wanted to... backed out the screws, straightened it out and it's been right as rain. I'm just throwing it out as a possibility, have you done any work on or around the dash recently?

-Darrell

Howling · Post by **Howling** » 27 Dec 2009, 11:01

I had a rattle under my hood that sounded like it was in the dash. I'm not sure how loud yours is but mine was pretty annoying. Come to find out it was the heat shield under the spark plug wires. All I had to do was tightin up a few bolts and use some lock-tight and no more rattle. I hope this helped out.

Post by **billofdurham** » 27 Dec 2009, 12:04

Rattles can appear to be coming from one place but are then found elsewhere.

+1 on the heat shield but it isn't the only heat shield on the car. You will find them above the exhaust system, especially where it is near to the floor pan. They all work loose over a period of time.

Bill.