SOLVED! Horrible rattles from upper part of the body. Videos and how to fix

[Mac92gli]

This rattle shown in the video below has been driving me so crazy for months that my wife and I have gotten into horrible arguments about dumping the truck, no matter the loss (it's a 24 big bend 4 door we purchased last August). Any time the suspension hit a bump at an offset, or if only one side of the truck hit something, such as a sunken manhole cover, this rattle was next to your ears. It made highway driving infuriating if there were a lot of expansion joints for bridge crossings.

I've literally spent hours pulling trim and fiddling around with trying to track this down. I've thought for months that there was broken pieces of metal or rivets inside the top bows. Along the way I tried to get my wife to let me buy a hard top. My dealer's service advisor drove with me and said "They're all like this, it's unlikely Ford will allow us to do anything".
Today I figured it out. And it wasn't anything I suspected.
I had the top open and was banging on things and pulling on things and noticed that these black rails that are visible from above when the top is open had some movement to them

Notice the silver "dots" in the vid above - some of those are locating posts, and some of them are threaded posts. There are 6 threaded posts on each side on a 4 door that hold these rails tight to the body. After pulling some trim apart this is what I found -

All 3 of the nuts I could see initially were about to fall completely off.

Sponsored

 

[Mac92gli]

Fixing it is fairly easy if you're handy. You just have to get all the trims above each window out of your way. (This all reflects a 4 door with soft top. 2 door or hardtop equipped may be slightly different)
1 - Remove the rear side windows and open your top all the way. I guess for hard tops you have to remove the front and center sections.
2 - Remove all 4 inside curtain airbag covers
3 - Pull down all your door/window seals about halfway.
4 - Remove the 4 covers in the center of each upper door opening that are between the door seals and the airbag covers. Each one of these is held with clips, no bolts. Pull down from the center so you can bend them to get them out
Now you'll have access to the 6 nuts on each bracket. 10 of my 12 were completely loose and about to fall off!!
5 - Remove all the nuts, apply a generous amount of red loctite to each one, and tighten them down well (don't know a torque spec. I just tightened the crap out of them. You can deform the pieces if you overtightened like I did)
Put everything back together while cursing Ford's absurdly bad assembly!!
Who else is old enough to remember this campaign - "Quality is job one" ? Tightening things is job 6.

 

[Mac92gli]

Hope the videos are working. For some reason the browser I'm on hates this site and they're not playing for me now

 

[duel007]

That's infuriating! Glad to see you resolved it, and I'll put this in my notes for the future. I've spent a ton of time chasing rattles in my Bronco and have most of them nailed down with padding on the hard top locating pins. But the rattle was coming from the same area above the doors, so this might have been my next step.

 

[Mac92gli]

That's infuriating! Glad to see you resolved it, and I'll put this in my notes for the future. I've spent a ton of time chasing rattles in my Bronco and have most of them nailed down with padding on the hard top locating pins. But the rattle was coming from the same area above the doors, so this might have been my next step.

It really should be a TSB. Who knows how many of those nuts were never tightened properly, or at all.

 

[nc-hiker]

Incredible and great work.

 

[cbrenthus]

This thread is about Broncos? Crap, I'm approaching 50 and thought this would help me with some issues

 

[Mac92gli]

This thread is about Broncos? Crap, I'm approaching 50 and thought this would help me with some issues

I hear ya. I wish I could fix my knees this easily

 

[pjmezz13]

Careful not to overtighten these. See below. The right side is one I stopped torquing down about half as much as I did to the one on the left. Looking closely, you can see the black part starting to pinch around the bolt.

 

[huey]

It really should be a TSB. Who knows how many of those nuts were never tightened properly, or at all.

good catch! I would go back to the dealer to show them how it's bad to make assumptions. They should treat every customer like they want to keep them as a repeat customer and saying all Broncos do that was obviously wrong lol. You should not have had to do this on your own assuming your 24 is still under full warranty, but I am sure your sanity is glad that you did

 

[Mac92gli]

Well, I wanted to send this thread to the account on here that is supposed to be someone from Ford. But I'm not able to send it a PM.
If someone from Ford DOES see this, I'd like to have a conversation about the whole saga.

 

[Mac92gli]

Careful not to overtighten these. See below. The right side is one I stopped torquing down about half as much as I did to the one on the left. Looking closely, you can see the black part starting to pinch around the bolt.

Oh god.... Mine are probably all like that. I was so frustrated I didn't care. Oh well. If anything breaks I'll deal with it.

 

[Beach_Bum]

Well, I wanted to send this thread to the account on here that is supposed to be someone from Ford. But I'm not able to send it a PM.
If someone from Ford DOES see this, I'd like to have a conversation about the whole saga.

Ford no longer monitors this site. Good for you on tracking down the issue and resolving it on your own. You might want to forward a link to this thread to your service advisor and their manager so they can use it as a reference for future customers complaining of the same issue.

 

[Sparkie]

It really should be a TSB. Who knows how many of those nuts were never tightened properly, or at all.

Well OP, for this issue, I believe you just wrote the TSB's first draft for Ford.
Be sure FoMoCo has your home address so they know where to send the check.

 

[Shrek27]

I have a hard top that I never remove. Would those parts and bolts only be on the soft tops?

Sponsored