Rattle in the drivers left ear

[vath2001]

No headliner. I've checked the top and its not in there.

I don't think its in the door. Heat shield on the motor? Not likely. But I will try looking this winter.

[Aron in Toronto]

It may be coming from the door striker/catch plate. I've heard others have wrapped electric tape around the metal (silver) loop to see if that was the source of the noise. If the noise goes away with the tape then it may need to be adjusted.

Good luck tracking it down.

[Dave S.]

I'm sure you've looked at this, but I had a rattle behind the driver's head and it was my seat hitting the roll bar, just had to move the seat a hair to stop it. That is probably not it, but I just had to mention it.
I also had a little rattle in the windstop window. Put a small piece of electrical tape on the bottom of the window and it fixed it.

[Burg Boxster]

Here's a thread w/ some possibilites

Covers both the door latch and a ticking/rattle noise caused by the convertible top cable.

Sounds are tough to chase in a car. When I first bought my '99 I would have given my right arm to stop the rattle from the passenger side dash speaker. Turns out it was some quarters stuck in the center console....

Good luck

[Gougoushu]

Have any of you with rattles installed the windstop hardware replacement kit? The one that installs with pop rivets.

If so, you had to drill out the old rivets, and might have left some rivet remnants inside the rollbar, or rollbar pads [esp in the case of the middle pad]. I just did this job and had to drill a nice big hole in the back of the middle rollbar pad to extract a lost rivet, because I noticed it rattled quite loudly.

[vath2001]

Well thanks for the suggestions, but the noise is in the left ear. The top cable might be it, but it was pretty snug last time I accessed the engine. I'll keep looking.

[roadracer311]

Solution! (I've also posted this at Renntech.org)

After a year of chasing this sound, I've finally made it go away on my car (2003 Boxster S with the original top).

The sound was exactly as you describe: shirt button hitting on a hollow tube. It was really taking away from my enjoyment of the car. So much so, that I was avoiding driving it unless I could to so with the top down.

I've attached two photos. The fist shows where to look. In my case it was on the passenger side (right side) under the spring loaded flap shown in the photo.

The solution was loosening the torx screw, pushing down where shown, with one finger while tightening the torx screw with the other hand. The position of the head of the screw moved from one end of the slot, to more than half way toward the other end of the slot.

Caveats: I have no idea what this spring loaded slotted thing is for. For me, it made the rattle go away, and has had no negative side effects. But that was only 24 hours ago.