Random rattle gearbox area

Hello everybody I hope you are all well and good, randomly before Xmas my defender had a random rattle at idle, sounds just like a heat shield rattling seems to be coming from the gearbox area not engine, still drives fine, same noise with clutch in or out handbrake in or off but it only does it from time to time as it went away for a few months.. it’s most noticeable if you put your head under the drivers side door whilst running.. It’s one of them noises where I’ll turn up at the mechanic and it doesn’t do it.any things to check off the list before I worry like an old lady? The moment you touch the accelerator pedal it goes

What you got in your battery box.
You need to really get under it and look is all I can suggest not just stick your ear under it

J

marjon said:

What you got in your battery box.
You need to really get under it and look is all I can suggest not just stick your ear under it

J

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Thanks for the reply, I will open up the battery box just to be sure there’s no hidden presents in there, it sounds like a heat shield rattling but can’t find one under there and it doesn’t do it all the time very annoying

They can take some pinning down rattlesounds can travel from afar.
You may have to wait till it gets really bad before you can find it

J

Could it be the exhaust? I had a similar problem a few months ago, tightening the bolts on the joints fixed the noise.

Thank you guys, just been under and checked and there is an exhaust heat shield which goes on where the gear box bolts onto the chassis, I guess to defect some heat away from the chassis, however this was loose so I have bent it up a bit to see if the noise changes, I’m not overly brave about going underneath whilst the engines running so we will see tomorrow, other than that I couldn’t find anything else loose

Park on a level surface chock one of the wheels with a couple of bricks or similar, hand brake on, transfer box in neutral. Start engine put it in 1st gear and check no movement then gearbox in neutral, you know it's not going to move.

We had a similar noise years ago on our 90 TD5 and it turned out to be a loose metal deflector ("flinger" the dealer called it) on the prop shaft where it goes on to the rear differential.

They removed it as it "wasn't necessary" and charged us £100

lightning said:

We had a similar noise years ago on our 90 TD5 and it turned out to be a loose metal deflector ("flinger" the dealer called it) on the prop shaft where it goes on to the rear differential.

They removed it as it "wasn't necessary" and charged us £100

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I had exactly that on the rear prop on my classic, took me about 6 months to find and during the investigations I found the VCU was toast and a sticking rear caliper. So for the sake of a 50p bit of metal I ended up with a bill just south of £500. It would all have needed doing anyway.