Exige 380 Sport Interior Squeaks / Harness Bar Trimming?

[Five50]

I recently bought up a late 2017 380 Sport with approx 2.5k miles.

The car has a meaningful amount of interior squeaks - they seem to emanate from around the general area of the seatbelt mounts.

I absolutely love the car but this is driving me nuts.

For avoidance of doubt, I lubed the roof seals - this was not the issue.

The car was with my friendly local Lotus dealer for some jobs recently and their simple message was that despite the car still being under factory warranty, Lotus Cars would not support investigative work of this type on a car more than 1000 miles old (not sure if this is correct??). The car did not come from them. At the time I picked it up from them, it was getting late and I needed to be somewhere so did not fully argue the toss.

So I took a slightly closer look myself. The car has a harness bar fitted by a well known Lotus specialist (for previous owner). The rear cabin plastic panel (where the rear speaker holes / blanks are) has been cut surprisingly roughly around the harness bar (quite big holes that might have impacted the structural rigidity of the panel) and on the drivers side, if you run your fingers around the back, you can feel that the panel touches the harness bar (pic attached - you can see the end of the bar where it mounts on the driver side and the hole cut around it).

The 380 is fairly firmly sprung, so one hypothesis is that the panel is moving against the harness bar as the car travels over bumps and this is a meaningful part of it. 

However, this is obviously a relatively difficult location to monitor when you are driving.

Anyone else have similar experience / thoughts before I go through the somewhat involved job of potentially moving the seats (for me anyway) to look a bit closer?

I did drive a slightly later (MY 18) dealer 350 sport and that was super tight - absolutely no squeaks or rattles and was expecting this to be the same.

 

 

 

[Bibs]

Being frank, if aftermarket parts have been fitted I'd not expect Lotus to investigate as part of the warranty as it does seem that those parts are causing the issue. 

Lotus warranty covets the the cars for 3 years/unlimited mileage but understandably they won't warrant other peoples parts. 

https://www.lotuscars.com/en-GB/en-GB/lotus-cars-warranty/

[Wilbert Camshaft]

My advice:

Remove the harness bar, replace the panel with a new one and fit the harness bar offerend by KomoTec instead - no rattles or squeeks at all in my Exige with that setup.

Last resort:

Transfer your car to KomoTec, Germany and let them fix the problem, in my case they proved to be kind of "squeek-whisperers".

[Mark030358]

The only thing that squeaked on mine from new was the seat runners, are you sure its not those? After modification by the dealer no squeaks.

However, the plastic trim panel  can rub, so maybe Wilberts I’d a good idea.

cheers

Mark

[stephenwhyte]

Pack it full of foam.....you can buy it in sheets and cut to suit - that’ll get rid of it. I’ve no issue with mine but have done this on previous cars and it always does the job. You can always poke and prod it into place so it can’t be seen either👍

[BatMobile]

I had a 2017 350 sport with harness bar installed and had zero squeaks over 12k miles. 
 

the only time one might appear is if I removed the roof to put the soft top on and then put the hardtop back on and didn’t tighten/lube it correctly.

[Hangar 111]

If it is rubbing, then it could be the cause - stuff something in there to eliminate it.

The panel has no structural rigidity anyway, it's only held in by a few plastic fasteners.

There are a number of other touch points in the area around your head that can make a noise.  Principle one of these is the roof latch plates, that is fairly common, so I'd be checking those also.

Dave

[Nathan Pitman]

Just remove the panel entirely?

[DJW]

my original V6S had bad squeaking / creaking behind drivers seat. Dealer removed rear cockpit panel and fitted foam tape behind panels, and once re fitted all sorted. 
 

From memory also had similar sound and found fitting some foam tape behind clip cover to seatbelt anchor worked a treat 

Edited April 1, 2020 by DJW