So I was driving around and trying to nail down where I was hearing several rattles coming from the rear interior of the car. Definitely from the seat, even though I have the "fixed" version that is aligned, and more rattles from the hatch. Here's what I did to get rid of ALL rattles. I never had the sound of the back seats rubbing together like others have had.
Rattle from the "replacement" seats that do not have the alignment issue:
- The top of the rear seat panels were not snapped into the frame all the way. It wasn't obvious to the naked eye (no panel gaps), but when I pressed around the perimeter of each carpeted seat back cover, I heard 2-3 "click" sounds per cover where it was clear that the plastic snap connectors were being properly homed into the rear seat frame
Other assorted rattles from the rear
- Adjusted the rubber bumpers for the hatch by following a YouTube video. They were WAY off. Only one of 3 of the bumpers was touching where they should have been on the body. The other 3 required significant adjustment. The hatch sounds better when it closes, and no low-frequency sound buffeting on the highway any longer.
- It was clear when pressing around on the black plastic hatch interior trim that there were at least 5 places across both trim planes where they weren't attached properly. I could easily pull on the ends and get a 1 inch or more gap on the passenger side of the lower panel, there was 1 inch of play in the middle near the interior hatch light, and the trim around the 3rd brake light was ready to fall off.
- I took all the trim down. It took very little effort, and it was clear many snap connectors were not snapped into place.
- Found that 2 of the white snap connectors were not even attached - one was stuck in the metal hatch, one was laying inside the trim panel
- Re-attached the white snap connectors to the black plastic trim
- Re-attached the trim around the 3rd-brake light, and found that I had to spend about 3-4 min actually feeling around to really make sure every snap-connector was homed properly. This plastic is quite flexible, so patience here is important. There is a drastic improvement in how this piece is attached to the rear hatch
- Re-attached the bottom trim to the hatch. This took patience to really get snapped in. I easily spent another 5-6 minutes making sure I heard a positive snap of each connector into place. I no longer can pull down the edges of the panel easily, and a drastic improvement in how this piece is secured to the rear hatch.
Once I completed re-installing the rear hatch trim, I drove around for about 15 min, going over rough rode, railroad crossings, and other places where I was hearing an embarrassing level of rattles and sounds from the rear over the past 2 days. Now I here ZERO rattles, and the car is much more pleasant to drive.
Hope this helps others out!
