netdoc

my 2002 996 C2 Cab has the following issues, nothing major but your thoughts???

1. Vibration on steering wheel at speeds 50mph and over. (Alignment and wheels balanced)

2. Rattling noise from both driver and passenger side doors (possibly from the seatbelts housing)? when top is down or when windows are down...

nycebo

1. Your tires are flat spotted. Run them a good little bit until they are well-warmed up and see if the problem goes away. If not, you have a bent wheel (assuming that you are balanced, which you very well may not be unless you had them done on a Hunter Road Force tire balance machine).

2. Hmmm.....my minor rattles and squeaks always go away when the windows are cracked since they aren't rubbing against the convertible top anymore. Do you have anything in the side door pockets? Seriously.

BlackCab996

Do you have 18 inch rims? I had similar issues on my car with a "wobble" at 70 and above. It's gone now but I had to get the tires balanced three times (after two at a dealer recommended place, I found a different place that fixed the problem). I had new Pirelli's on the car and I've read that they're tough to keep in balance. If your rims are not bent, this should fix it, but you need it done by someone who is good (it doesn't need to be expensive - I got it done for $20 per tire). If you follow my profile to my posts here, you'll see a ton of great responses and ideas on potential issues if it's not tire balancing.

Can't help on the window rattle - good luck...

teflon_jones

Just because the wheels are balanced doesn't mean they're balanced correctly. I had to bring my C4 back to a shop 3 times once to get my wheels balanced correctly. Keep in mind this is a shop in Boston that has at least 2 other Porsches on the lifts at the same time, an M3 or M5, and occassionally a Ferrari. They have an excellent reputation but there was a junior tech or somebody with a hangover that balanced them the first two times. The third time one of the managers and a senior tech did them and they finally came out right.

My advice is not to go searching for other causes when you haven't ruled out the most likely one.

For the rattle in the seat belts, does this happen when you're wearing the seat belts? Or only when one of them is unbuckled?

Eli at Pelican

Find someone who lives close to you and borrow the fronts for a run..... See if it's in the wheels.....

That's a quick way.....

-Eli

skipp

I had door squeeks, it was the where the latch meets the hoop on the body of the car....dealer made it better and I wrapped the hoop thing that the latch attached to with electrical tape to break the contact. No more squeeks, although it's a jury rig. Got sick of explaining it to the dealer.

Skipp

PTEC

1. Definately get a road force balance, your tires might be out of round. You can balance a tire to the millionth of a gram but if its out of round it wont roll smooth no matter what.

2. The most common cause of a rattle/clicking sound in that area is a the door latch. Its possible to adjust the latch on the body and get rid of that rattle.

Eli K

Ditto on the wheel balance. Out of 4 attempts there is only one shop in our area which ended up balancing my 18s correctly. Try Paul at Radial Tire.

TD in DC

Also, even if the wheels are balanced properly, unevenly worn tires will still make the car feel awful. I recently had a problem with the car feeling awful about 75-80 mph. I tried alignment, balancing, etc . . . The tires had plenty of tread left, but . . . as soon as I swapped them for new tires, the car felt brilliant again. Sounds like it might be tires.