e39 10 second creaking door fix

[brokenbat]

Got to thinking about the constant creaking in the door/window channel and how it goes away when the window is cracked open.

I just shoved some pipe cleaners up into where the top edge of the door glass hits the top end of it's travel and drove around the block and low and behold, 85% quieter and I can hear the passenger side with no pipe cleaners rattling like Charlie Watts.

The window goes up and down and they don't pop out and that's it. I started to use magic marker (black) to cover up the white fuzz on the pipe cleaners I had but for illustration I have left them white except for the one closet to back edge of door. You really only see them if you get down by door handle and look up into top of channel with window down a coouple of inches.

I am going to run them all the way around and see what happens. If they do start to come out because of wind with the windows down, it would be no problem to spot glue them in

I really didn't want to dismantle the whole door trim etc to quiet things down, and this seems to work out quite well

see photos

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another shot using putty knife to shove pipe cleaner in

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one more shot

[e36_m3_Turbo]

i think this should go into the FAQ section

[brokenbat]

I guess it should but after driving around for about 3 hours the 85% quieter figure went down a bit so it should not be put in stone yet

I think it was the same sort of feeling you get when you add a CAI and hear the noise and you are mentally thinking it's better than it is.

I'm going to try some thin rubber tubing (like black vaccum hose/tube) and shove it up there and see if I can fill in the gap inside the top of the window channel . Hopefully when the window goes up it will "expand" the tube and push everything together up inside of the window frame and keep things on the QT.

I guess there are some sensors up in that top edge to tell the window that it is all the way up so the motor shuts off. I don't want to bogart that operation and hear my motor grinding to shove the window up another 1/16th of an inch

[sp0rky]

I believe the motor shuts off by pressure, not a sensor, but i could be wrong.

Also, if your looking for something around the size of the pipe cleaner, try going to your local OSH or Home Depot and getting screen door spline, its MEGA cheap and is abou tthat diameter and is hollow rubber, so it should expand well.

good luck.

[brokenbat]

Thanks re screen door spline. I'll try that but I think the noise is on the other side of where the top edge of the glass recesses into the channel.

I noticed there are small factory made holes in the top edge of the weatherstrip where I put some teflon spray before and that seemed to work for about a day as well. I going to try to feed some of the rubber tube into one of these holes and see if I can get it to sit up along the top edge of the door (it's the wetherstrip outside the window frame area between the top of the door and the inside top of the door frame area).

I'll keep dicking around up to the point where I see that the only real fix is to yank the door trim and go inside. I'm still convinced that it can be fixed externally. I know if I spray expanding foam insulation in behind the weatherstrip it would work, but I'm afraid that it will get hard and make the rubber too stiff to seal out air noise etc. That's why I think filling the gap and putting the window up and the door closed pressing everything together with a pliable rubber might do the trick