Vibrating Dashboard

[Daniel M]

Hey Guys...

Strange question....does anybody else have a vibrating dashboard? When i hit about 70mph, the whole unit kind of jitters up and down-nothing major, just a strong vibration. Its enough to make the CD player jump when i'm listening to CD's. The car has been lowered with bigger wheels....is this possibly the cause?

Also, i know this should go in the parts wanted section, but it's that insignificant, i doubt anybody would even look at it. All 440/460's have the interior clocks in the same place...on the earlier models there was a small square plastic panel. Some said "unleaded Fuel Only', some were blank and some had an LED for the alarm in them. On the Turbo models, this is where the info centre switch would be. Just wondered if anybody had a spare one as i now have a hole in mine!

Later people....

Dan M

[Martin Cox]

Dan,

I have a 440 SE (1994 model) and the dashboard rattles at the slightest provocation. It's annoying but since it's usually drowned out by the rattle from the sunroof, I've never bothered to do anything about it. The glovebox door tends to rattle too but that can be improved by making sure all the relevent screws are not loose and careful adjustment of the latch.

Martin Cox

[Daniel M]

Hi Martin...

Thanks for that-glad i'm not he only one! Managed to sort my glovebox from rattling (although it does now need two-three attempts to close it-but i can live with that!!). Sunroof was always a niggle, but it was the cover rattling-so to solve this i push it back from it's fully closed position about 1cm, and it seems to have stopped it.

Dashboard i'm just going to have to live with. It was annoying because it made my CD player jump horrendously, but thats been cured with an iPod.

Cheers for the reply,
Dan M

[Dan F]

Hi Dan M.

I had the same problem on two of the 440s I have had.
It was only when I had increased the wheel size as it happens.

Thing is it didn't start off like that, but somehow I don't think that the 400 series chassis is really supposed to take wheels any bigger than 16" maximum.

On my 440 turbo for example, I had the tyres changed, the wheels balanced, the tracking done, the driveshafts changed, the engine mounts changed etc. etc.
In the end I decided to get the wheels balanced again at a different garage and low and behold they found that one of my nice wheels was bent!! Got it changed and it was smooth as silk after that. This was what caused it on my 440 2.0i SE as well! (My Parents have some very badly pot-holed roads by them, and this all happened when I lived there).

One thing to do with big alloys when you are getting them balanced, is to ask for a 'static balance on the studs'. This was the only way I could ever get the wheels on my 400s to balance properly.
It means they perform a static balance on your wheel (which is different to a normal balance apparently), but instead of mounting the wheel on the machine by the hub, they use a doohickey that supports it as it would be supported on the car, i.e. by the wheels studs and bolts. Unless you have spent a fortune on wheels that are 'hub-centric' like Volvo original wheels, this is the best way to do it.

Hope that helps.

Dan.

[Daniel M]

Cheers for that Dan.

I'm due some new tyres soon, so i think i'll follow that one up. Cheers for the advice!

Dan M