I bought a 2015 ES350 in August and have a couple of weird noises I'm wondering if any of you have experienced.

First is what sounds like either door rubber seal on body rubber seal or window on rubber seal noise over certain types of bumps. Is this common? I can live with this until I bring it in for its first service, but it might be a simple fix I can do.

The second is more of a concern. When I'm moving slowly over an angled surface like a driveway that might cause some "twist" of the car, there can be a loud pop sound. Since it does not happen very often, it is very difficult to locate, and I'm sure its one of those things the dealer service department will never hear. When it happened over the weekend, it almost sounded like it was coming from the roof. This morning, it sounded like it might have come from the rear driver side door, but it is hard to tell.

Any thoughts?

 

Rattles and what not are very hard to fix because acoustics of the car makes it extremely hard to locate the source of the sound. With that said, I had exact same rubber rubbing noise coming from the door and metal ticking sound from rear door.

What I did was I removed both door panels, front and rear and reinforced plastic clip and put foams around most of plastic/metal contacts and noise went away. Door panels are very easy to remove.

As for popping noise, I have that sound sometimes. If you push or give a little pressure in the area between sunroof and rear ceiling dome light. You can probably hear some popping sound. I think that was the source anyway, not 100% sure. You have to remove the dome light and put some foams in that area.


You can try to tell the dealer about noise but if your dealer is anything like mine they will say "could not replicate the noise" and brush you off.

 

One of the sources of a minor noise/rattle that was found early on was the grab handle above and to the rear of the drivers' head. Members used various methods to eliminate the noise so check it out.

 

With having owned my 2013 ES for going on 2 1/2 years, the only place from which I've heard any rattles or chatter has been from those grab handles. I also know from reading threads here that quite a few others have found the grab handles to be the source of chatter on their ES vehicles. I think that, with changes in temperature and/or humidity, the area around the hinges on the grab handles can produce the chatter.

There have been some who have removed the plastic caps on each side of the hinges for the grab handles and put foam padding around those hinges, but at least a couple people have put scratches in the plastic caps when they were trying to remove them. I found that I can insert small pieces of foam into the area around the hinges without removing the caps by just compressing the foam and carefully pushing it with a small screw driver between the bottom of the plastic cap and the head liner in the area around hinges. I did that with the grab handles by both of the front doors, and the chattering is gone.

 

Thanks, everyone. I will look into these fixes.

 

There are plastic trim removal tools that can purchased specifically for this, which will prevent the gouges that others have made.

 

This is a good suggestion and the various kits only cost about $6.00. I think that Harbor Freight has them.