Vent removal

[Nyyyko]

I've a nice little rattle which seems to come from the driver dash near the windscreen pilar. Without completely dismantling the entire dash I'm hoping I can get to the culprit by removing the driver side vent, stick my hand in ( may need to utilise the daughter with small hands and arms) and see what's happening. My guess is it's a vent diversion thingy. Does the vane panel just pop in and out? Hoping not to crack or damage anything. Could this area also possibly be accessed by removing instrument cluster? Or maybe from underneath the dash? It's fine on smooth roads but as we know Australia is full of course chip roads.

[k_rider]

It was a fairly common problem to have a 'creaky' sort of rattle in the dash, usually on the LHS side, due to movement of the dash assembly at the points that it mounts to the body of the car (or whatever framework there is behind the dash). I certainly had the problem with my car! I fixed it by putting a piece of thin, hard plastic between the dash and its mounting point and a dab of Loctite on the three mounting screws.

I'd check this out before digging around in your vents, in case this is where the problem is. Simply pop the cover on the end of the dash - the fuses live under the RHS one. There are three spring clips around the rear facing edge retaining it, so just prise it off with a large flat blade screwdriver. The front edge of the cover hooks into the main dash assembly (where it tucks under the rubber door seal). There are three Torx screws securing the end of the dash. The top and bottom ones are easy enough to spot. The one in the middle sits upside down and in a bit (on the LHS at least, I'm not really sure about the RHS, just assuming it's the same), so is not immediately obvious and a bit of a sod to get a Torx key into!