Okay, I've done some fairly exhaustive research on the subject now. It seems that there is a squeaking or rattling noise in the roof rails of the 2009 Cabrio models only. I happen to have both a 2008 and 2009 Cabriolet. Don't ask -- the 2008 is for sale. (It was an orphan.)
Anyway, I have isolated the problem to the roof rails of the 2009 Cabriolet. I noticed when I drove my 2008 that it did not rattle. The 2009 does. The 2009 roof rail seems to be slightly shorter than the 2008. I know this seems odd. But if you grab the roof rail with both hands and move it back and forth, there is about 1-2 mm of free play in the 2009 rail. There is none in the 2008. I have examined both of them carefully and can see no difference whatsoever. Perhaps they changed the gaskets, who knows? All I know is, if I swapped the roof rails between the 2008 and 2009, the problem stays with the roof rails. Sort of. what I put the 2008 rails on the 2009 car, the rattling stopped. When I put the 2009 rails on the 2008 car there was no rattle. Weird. However, the free play was still there.
So I looked for some sort of adjustment at the rear of the rail assembly, there is a bolt that protrudes down about 2 inches and a metal clip with a roller assembly on the end. This is the only part of the roof rail that can actually be removed or adjusted. So I went after that. See the photo.
Removing the entire clip and bolt assembly, which requires a star ratchet driver and a 10 mm wrench, and re- torqueing it seemed to cure the problem on the 2009 rails. Actually the noise did not go away, but changed in nature. Instead of squeaking and rattling in an annoying fashion, it changed to a mild thunk. And I had to provoke it by driving aggressively over a series of rough pavement and bumps. All in all, an improvement.
However, the rattling and squeaking noise is very annoying. It sounds as if the car would be 10 years old. But it's not. It's brand-new. So Smart USA or the dealer body needs to know about this problem and either issue a recall or figure out a better fix than my lame attempts.
I did not notice this noise when I took delivery of my 2009 in mid-January. But I started noticing it a couple of weeks ago, and then discovered posts on this forum about this same problem. Anyone else who has notice this noise: please post and relate your experiences. Perhaps the fix I have described will also help you.
In addition, on the 2 inch long post there is a rubber grommet. That rubber grommet can be pulled down a few millimeters, which will cause it to be repositioned when you reinstall the roof rail. That also seems to help. Turning the bolt with the 10 mm wrench also has the side effect of changing the angle of the Gold clip assembly. It seems this would have some affect on the pull-down torque of the entire roof rail assembly. But it does not seem to do much. Be careful -- if you loosen the nut too much, the roof rail will be very difficult to get off.
Tech heads and engineer types -- please help us out here.
Anyway I hope all this helps. It's late and I'm going to bed.
Today
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