Rattle While Idle

[cwwilly]

I hope you guys can help me with this. I have an '03 Mazda Protege ES 2.0 Automatic with 80k miles. At about 70k miles I started hearing a strange rattle from the engine compartment. It only occurs while I'm at idle with the car in gear. If I hear the rattle and place it in neutral the sound goes away. If I begin driving the car the rattle is also gone. It sounds like the noise is more prominent towards the driver side, but I could be wrong.

All threads on the board talk about rattles at higher RPMs, so I thought I would throw this mystery out to you all.

Thanks,

Chad

 

[Doodsmack]

You have 10 posts, to my 700. You are nothing to me.

 

[martispeed]

What kind of rattle is it?? Plastic, thin tin, metal to metal? One thing i can think of is the heat shield that is between your exaust pipe and the underbody of your car. Sometimes the metal bands that hold it on will rust causing it to come loose and rattle.

 

[Bartron8000]

Yeah I had a rattle in my car and it was the heat sheild, so I just took it off and no more rattle.

 

[cwwilly]

I'll checkout the heat shield this weekend. It does sound more like a plastic rattle than a metal one. Any ideas about what plastic parts could be rattling?

Thanks.

 

[martispeed]

I Konw on my car, i have sls mounts and because of the vibes, my radiator fans vibrate, but i can only hear it at idle. My guess as to the reason you can here it when you put it into gear and not when neutral or park, is because in gear there may be a different frequency of vibes. (AKA faster or slower vbrations) So when its in gear, it is matching the resonant frequency of the piece thet is vibrating. thus causing it to be auditable. Hopefully that migt help with the cause...