Jacob Lee

So after spending the last 3-4 days trying all sorts of things to solve my constant seat squeaking problem, I finally solved it.

Recap: even over smooth surfaces, my driver's seat constantly made this leather against leather squeaking noise, quite loud, and just drove me insane because it never, ever went away. problem has been there since the day I picked up the car.

So I tried Lexol to see if I could soften up the leather, and I tried reclining the seat up and down a number of times just to see if it needed to be "broken in". I made an appointment with the dealer to try and get it fixed and all they talked about was sending my beautiful car off to some upholstery shop for the whole day where who knew would drive it ala Ferris Bueller.

I tried hide food leather treatment, and even went by the leather upholstery shop to show them the seat and see if the leather for the cushion of the seat was too taut.

All this failed and as much as I love the car, I was all ready to sell it at a loss and go spend another 91k for another M5 that didn't have this problem.

Then while I was washing my car, I had an idea and went low-tech. I was trying so hard to FIX the problem rather than RESOLVE the problem, I overlooked the obvious.

From the back seat of the car, I stuck a thin piece of polishing cloth through the joint where the driver's seat backrest meets the bottom cushion.

Then I went out and drove over the roughest roads I could find and voila, seat was absolutely quiet. So I pulled out the polishing cloth, went to a designer suit store where I'm a VERY good customer and asked them for some scrap cloth which color matched my black leather seat.

They gave me some of the excess material that is cut from suit pants when they tailor it, and even folded and stitched it so that it exactly matched the horizontal length of my seat joint, and was just wide enough to be pushed into the joint without any part showing from the back or from the front of the seat.

I know, why bother color matching something that isn't going to show? Well, probably the same reason why I'd rather have an M5 than "settle" for a perfectly good 540.

So I'm now happy as far as this problem, and while a teeny, tiny part of me still knows this problem isn't "fixed" and that my driver's seat really is defective in some way, it's "resolved" in that I don't hear the problem anymore.

Now the thing still driving me crazy is these knocking, rattling noises coming from the rear section of my car. Sometimes seems from the rear parcel shelf, sometimes from what seems like the rear roof section or rear suspension section. But again, unless I have my radio on loud, the noise is constant.

I swear, I think I want to run my VIN to see if it had ever been in an accident before the dealer sold it to me w/ 5.2 miles on it.

Italia

Glad to hear you got to the bottom of your seat problem.

If you're as diligent as you were with the seat, you'll have that rattling in the rear eliminated in no time.

EBMCS03

Jacob, There was 5.2 miles on your beast when you got it? Be kind to the baby... work with it, I'm sure it doesnt want to make those rattling noises to bother you... Like Italia said "If you're as diligent as you were with the seat, you'll have that rattling in the rear eliminated in no time."

Jacob Lee

Anybody know if the rear parcel panels pop off? If they do, maybe I can get in there and see if I can build little paper wedgies to kill the noise

Haleakala

I thought I was the only one having this knocking, ratteling noises from the backseat.
Does someone know how to fix this problem?

Jacob Lee

Haleakala - read my post on solving my knocking/rattling problem. Try the same thing and see if your noise goes away. If it does, I'll be both estatic and upset.

From the production numbers, we can even check to see if it was the same line worker that made both our cars