Dash rattle found!

Thanks to Frank Hudon's tip in another thread about listening through a hose to find a rattle, we found our Prius' annoying dash rattle! It was coming from the windshield side of the front center speaker.

I know the front speaker is common culprit for dash rattles, but pressing down on ours never stopped the rattle. So I thought it must be something else. The rattle was worse on bumpy roads in colder weather.

In our case the rattle seemed to be coming from the soft white clip holding the cream-colored connector to the black speaker grill, where they were attached. Perhaps I introduced some play in the joint when I disconnected the speaker several months ago. Now it's a loose connection between the two light-colored plastic pieces, but I haven't figured out how to get them apart yet.

Not sure what to do out of the following choices:

- Wedge something in the joint to take out the "play" and put the speaker back in (still disconnected)

- Unscrew the speaker from the grille, and just put the grille back in.

- Get the clip seperated from the connector somehow, and put speaker back in without the rattling clip.

 

Just to clarify, in my case it wasn't where the speaker fit in the dash that rattled. Rather it was the bit that holds the wire connector to the windshield-side edge of the speaker grill.

Next time you've got your center speaker out (mine's been out and back many times too) try wiggling the connector to see if it could explain your rattle.

I've also had rattles that disappeared when I opened and closed the cup holders, or that happened when the drawer at the bottom of the console wasn't fully shut.

BTW, the hose we used was left over from a dishwasher installation. Otherwise I would have bought a short length of clear tubing.

If your rattle goes away with the speaker out, then you won't learn much more from listening through a tube.