Door trim rattles with bass - despite Dynamat

[mathemagician]

Hi guys,

I recently applied Dynamat to the inner and outer skin (covered at least 95%) of each of the 4 doors of my Polo GTI, yet the door trims still rattle with certain tracks at certain bass frequencies, especially the punchy ones. Any ideas on how to get rid of them once and for all??

Oh yeah, it's the stock 6 speaker system, no mods other than Dynamat.

Thanks in advance!

[Swainey32]

did you remove anything from the door when you applied dynamat? It's designed as a sealed enclosure by vw, when you disrupt the sealed nature, then you will get vibration from the back pressure of the speaker escaping.

[mathemagician]

Nope, just added in the Dynamat. All screws etc went back in. I made sure to cut the Dynamat to size plus it is quite thin so it doesn't interfere with how the trim sits against the door.

The purpose of the Dynamat is to improve the door's characteristics as a speaker enclosure and to reduce vibrations. It has noticeably improved how the stock speakers sound and most of the rattles are gone, but some have stayed...

[Swainey32]

yeah it's good stuff, used a tonne of it in my last car.
I had similar issues in the pursuit of rattle reduction, I found replacing all the door press studs helped as they do allow some rattle over time, on the more extreme some 3M double sided tape to hold the door in place. Other than that its a painful process of taking the door trim off, seeing what could potentially rattle, attach some foam with adhesive backing, put back on and see if that helped, fairly fiddly process but effective if you're patient haha.

[mathemagician]

Yeah I know what you mean. I had to do similar things with my previous car but I never managed to get rid of all the rattles... Can you recommend some good products/brands (i.e. for adhesive foam) to use for this rattle hunt? Thanks!

[Swainey32]

I just got some off ebay, came in a roll and just stuck on anything that appeared to make contact with anything inside the door. I figure foam is foam haha

[mathemagician]

I think I'll just buy some adhesive foam/window seal foam from Bunnings and work with that, let's see how that goes

[bazzle]

I searched out a bass rattle in the drivers door of my R32.
It was the small wiring loom that runs in a channel just below the door opener handle from front to rear. I got some white door draught foam with the glue on the back and wound it along the loom. Noise seems to of gone now (2 weeks)

Baz

[nermal]

I had a minor rattle in the driver side trim after my recent project and it turned out to be a couple of Christmas-tree clips I hadn't removed from the door frame and put back into the trim.. I also decided to put some Dynamat on the trim itself in some places that made a rattle when tapped (including underneath the wiring harness).

It's now sounds dead and there are no rattles anywhere in the car (I also Dynamatted around the interior fuse box ...that I never knew existed until I popped the cover off to Dynamat it).

[mathemagician]

@bazzle: I had to remove most clips/tape holding any harnesses to the door for dynamatting, so after finishing, I reattached them with duct tape. They shouldn't be causing any rattles I hope. But I'll check when I take off the trim again to apply the adhesive foam.

@nermal: The christmas tree clips are definitely back in and secured correctly. Made absolutely sure of that. Haven't put any Dynamat on the trim though, that might be worth a try! Where would I find that fuse box in my Polo GTI though? Not that car-savvy...

[nermal]

Not sure in the Polo (hopefully someone here can help you, or flip through your owners manual).

In the R36, it was the flat piece of trim where the door suits up flush against the dash. There was a small notch at the bottom I used to pop it open with the nylon trim remover.