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      11-24-2013, 01:42 PM   #31
GRDR
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Drives: BMW X1 25d
Join Date: Nov 2013
Location: Hungary

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Many sources of X1 rattle in X125d

I just finished a 3 month search of disturbing noises coming form the direction of the dashboard in my brand new X125d. I want to share my experience with the Bimmer forum community to help others who are in similar situation. My conclusion is there may be many sources of noise and rattle existing at the same time, some of them temperature dependent, which makes the situation very complicated! There is a general problem, which comes from the fact that you are sitting in one position i.e. in the drivers seat when you observe the noise or rattle and want to deternine when it is coming from. I observed that this can be very missleading. In my case e.g. I heard one rattle coming from the right side of the dashboard. I asked my son to sit in the car and he pointed to the center of the dashboard, and he was right!!! Finaly I found the source to be a loose brake line tube attached to the firewall behind the engine running from the driver side to the disk brake in the front right.
I want point out a few sources I had to eliminate in my car. One big source of noise is plastic panels attached to the end of the engine hood (3 pieces), aspecially the one on the right side of the car. The right side of the car is very cramped and the gap between this plastic part and the vertical palstic cover under the window is very small or even none. When the hood is vibrating (which is natural with a diesel engine, or on rough roads) the two touch and generate ratteling sound coming in to the car through the air vents. You can lift the hood with a little screw which is there for this purpose and kill the noise. Another anoying noise came from a bunch of cables covered with a plastic tube running form the top right side of the engine in S shape to the righ fender. In the 25d the plastic cover is so close to the metal body that during the movement of the engine on rough rods it touches the metal and generates ratteling noise. The metal body brings in the sound to cabin. I was lucjy to discover this because my car is white, the plastic is black and I discovered the white paint on the plastic due to the contact between the two!
These were the most annoying sources of noise, but during the search I found other sources too. In the very front of the car the plastic housing of the fan behind te radiator made a terrible noise when I just touched it, similarly the plastic covers underneath of the engine compartment were generating wery loud vibrating noise. With a little selfadhesive foam I corracted also these.
I try to be modest and not to comment on the workmanship of BMW, but with a little care and foam attached to special palces in the car they could have avoided a lot of work to me and made me a satisfied customer.
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