In the backseat of our LS, whenever the road gets rough. It happened for the first time today, I was sitting in the backseat, my bro and I both heard it. It sounded like it was coming from the sunshade area. When we stopped I opened the trunk and rearranged the stuff there, thinking that might be it. But when the car continued the creaky noise was there...the audio system was turned off and we heard it.

I'm wondering if perhaps the sunshade deformed due to excessive heat and now makes noise? BTW the sunshade works fine...

Edit: It doesn't seem like the sunshade is damaged, I checked...

 

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I'm wondering if there is another reason why these strange sounds come from the back of the car...I was wondering if perhaps the brake light housing was making extra noise...

...then I noticed the aft speaker, the large rectangular one above the center seat, doesn't seem to be producing loud sound relative to the side rear door speakers. In fact, I'm not sure it produces sound at all. I adjusted the DSP on the audio system to rear only, but still the back speaker is not loud if producing at all. Could that be the source of the mysterious 'creak' or 'static' sound? However, the sound persists when the audio system is turned of...

...still could it be overheating of that section?

 

i don't know the answer, but maybe you should ask someone to drive over those bumpy roads again, and you feel around the rear deck area and push around to see if the noise stop. and if so, what are you pushing on. that's the best way to pinpoint the problem

 

Thanks Rominl...

I found out that the back speaker is a subwoofer (duh!) and it works fine.

The sound is very miniscule, others can't hear it but I have sharper hearing...its a creak which is much less loud than the sound of the seatbelts, or the stretch of leather which occurs when someone shifts their weight on the back seat...

And I sat in the back seat, feeling around as we drove on a bumpy road...no way to stop the creaks, but then again on some roads there were no creaks at all even during some bumps. Oh well.

...so maybe it's nothing, it could also simply be wear and tear, or the change in temperature (it's gotten quite hot in recent days here in L.A., with the car interior getting hot parked out in the sun...)

 

i know what you talking about, these sound are on and off right? i had that on my sc430 too. sometimes on bumpy road there is nothing, but sometimes it's very noticeable. sometimes it's cold, sometimes it's hot. you just have to be picky and look around

i can tell you that last time i was debugging the squeaking on my sc430, my wife was driving the car at certain speed on a bumper freeway and i was on the pessenger side doing some very weird pose to lean my ear in every direction to pinpoint the noise.

imho you need to somehow find the cause, be able to push on it or so and stop it. once you are able to pinpoint the noise then you can find the fix

the rear of the car isn't "that" complicated, but still it's a lot of moving parts

 

hmmm... i just got that strange creaky noise too on my LS. It gets annoying when i dont have the radio on. It's not even that loud though. just freaks me out. the dealer could not pinpoint the sound.

 

A family member and myself sat in the back of the LS today, where we tried to diagnose the source of the tap-tap-tap...it could be coming from the aft windshield-mounted brake light (or 'stop light' as the LS manual seems to put it). Could it have deformed under heat?

Incidentally, this was the subject of the first LS 1989 recall due to that part overheating, surely Lexus fixed the problem since then?

I was wondering if there was any way to partially open the brake light housing to check, like I once did on our old Mercedes S-class (that part overheated and the bulb died, needed to be replaced), but there don't seem to be any seams or access panels. Plus the LS manual warns of 'electric shock' hazard.

But the rattle remains. Incidentally, Edmunds seemed to notice that in a 2001 test: http://www.edmunds.com/reviews/roadt...3/article.html

I'm pretty sure it is (in order of likely suspicion) either 1) brake light, 2) sunshade assembly, 3) seat belt assembly, or something at the back upper windshield area. I asked the dealer about diagnosing it, but they said it would 'take time,' at least over 2 hours...plus I'm nervous that in taking apart the back seat area, they might do more harm than good.

Oh well, its a minor but subtly nagging problem...

 

could be that it's under heat and expand and squeak? if you are sure that's the problem you can just bring it back to dealership and see how they can fix it