One annoying rattle, Rattle coming from the hatch Options

[razor7]

Hey Guys,
So, for those of you that don't know, my car was recently hit by a drunk driver at 3am. The stupid girl was 19 years old, and was clearly drunk, I would guess over a .20 She was hauled away in cuffs.

So I took my car to Cal-West, which is supposed to be the best body shop around. After getting the car back, I had major rattling coming from the back of the car. Well, to anyone who takes turns fast, this will just bug the crap out of you. I couldn't stand the constant left to right rattling, then right to left. Through S curves I would just blast music so that I wouldn't hear it.

So first and foremost I pulled out the rear seats and checked underneath them. I found 2 washers, 3 clips, and 2 broken nubs that looked like the came off the tip of a hot glue gun. I thought that I had found everything, but the rattling still persisted. So I checked under the spare tire and found more plastic pieces. These still didn't stop the rattling though! Finally I had my friend sit in the back, and he pinpointed it to the rear hatch assembly right overhead. So we pulled the part off and found 3 clips buried down inside the metal housing. After an hour and a half we finally got out the pieces and the test run showed no rattling. So, I'm posting this long amount of text to try and help anyone that's had a rear end collision and still hears metal on metal clicking.

Here are some pictures to give you more detail.



The back moulding. You can see the metal clips on it.


There is the actual clip. That's exactly what got stuck inside of the rear hatch.


Where the moulding came from.


That's the hole it got stuck inside.

The only way I was able to get them out was by using a plaque scraper from a dentists office, an air compressor with a jet nozzle to push the clip around inside, and a tiny light to fit inside of the holes to see what I was doing.

Hope this helps someone else down the road!

-TC

This post has been edited by razor7: Oct 6, 2008 - 9:57 PM

[dutchboy]

There is the actual clip. That's exactly what got stuck inside of the rear hatch.


-TC

I am missing some of these clips. If I can't get them out of the hatch, do any auto stores sell these things?

This post has been edited by dutchboy: Oct 26, 2008 - 5:02 PM