Im new, have also a rattling noise!
 

Hi there,

Found this site think its wonderful! I read about the rattling noise problems and thought, wow lots of people with similar problems! Well the rattling on my car is not there if the road is completely smooth. As soon as it becomes minor bumpy, boom! seems to be coming from underneath middle section. I am not as technically oriented as most of you though! IT does stop when brakes are applied....any clues? your help is appreciated, thanks!

svxgal

SVXGAL,

First, welcome to the SVX family. Like any family sometimes we are nice. Sometimes we cuss & fight with each other; and sometimes we are disfuctional. But when one of us has a real problem, we always try to help.

Now for the rattling. there are heat shields around the exhaust sytem. &5% of the time they are the cause of rattling from under ythe car. With the car secured on a lift, shake various areas of the exhaust system by hand. CAUTION- use leather WORK GLOVES - the exhaust system will be very HOT.

I'm sorry if I insult your inteligence, but I don't what you know about cars and I wouldn't want you to get your hand burned.

What year & model is your SVX and is it AWD ?

thanks for the welcome!
 

Hi! well, first of all you can assume I don't know very much, so I appreciate ALL advice! thanks...My Subaru is a '92 Silver LSi. Fully equipped AWD. That's the only way you could buy them in Canada. I am the second owner, bought it in '98. It has 164,000 kms. Since I bought it I put on 60,000km of that. My father is the original owner of his Maroon '92 SVX LSi as well (low mileage on his). So you can see we love these cars! I am just not sure I can keep up with the maintenance...
:( Anyways, I did have a problem earlier with the Heat Shield and the dealer supposedly fixed that problem, but a diff noise came up which my Dad figured out was also related to the Heat Shield. The dealer didn't do a good job I guess. That sound was coming when the gas was pushed. That was fixed by putting a clamp to secure the heat shield in place--no cost! yippee! But this other rattling has been there for some time and I have two diff people (one the dealer) tell me it is 2 diff things. I don't believe either of them, when they can't find the real problem, they make up something to get $$. (my opinion). I think you may be right, that it could be with the exhaust. That will be my next check. One person said that when the veh was put through emissions testing something may have come loose or caught in the exhaust, which is causing this. But I did that test over a year ago.

Thanks again!

Welcome to the club, SVXGAL! Glad to have you aboard :)

Just to keep the ideas open, if it was exaust related why would it stop when the brakes are applied? Seems to me it would do it all the time (on non-smooth roads) if it was loose heat shields. Since you say it seems to come from the middle of the car, has anyone checked your transmission mounts? Force of braking might load (or unload depending on how you look at it) the drivetrain and the resulting force on the drive components could hold off the sound you are hearing while acceleration or neutral drivetrain load could allow it to vibrate.

I'm sure you'll get lots of suggestions and ideas shortly. Good luck with your car. I think it's awesome that your family enjoys the SVX as much as they do :)

Welcome here. If your noise is more "buzzy" than "rattley" (is that a word?), I'd say heat shields or resonator, which is a common SVX annoyance. If definately a rattle, it could be one of hundreds of things, that I'll let others take a wild guess at.
Good luck. Treat her right & your maintenance won't be any worse than any other orphaned luxury car.

Ron.