Thank you so much guys!! This is the culprit!!! Thank you Thank you Thank you!!!!!!

 

3M Foam sounds like a good idea.

Indeed I've cleaned, alcohol-wiped, de-greased, carefull aligned and reglued the rubber strips but doing this no longer works (did for a year) so I suspect the moldings have de-formed, you can see the gap and cant adjust it out no matter how hard you try.

So 3M Tape or new ones!

 

Can you shoot us a picture of yours? You keeping mentioning rubber strips; and yes it's true that the first few hundred or so trucks had a rubber strip integrated in to the molding instead of the hard-shell plastic and 3m tape that all others had; but your signature notes you as having an '05 so it's not making sense to me; unless the international versions are different for some reason.

 

Unfortunately I dont have any pictures (thouight I did) anyway the last image in Windshield Rattles when Driving is exactly it, except the those red 3M strips are a single piece of thin, pre-formed rubber bonded all the way around the edge. Over time the cold and wet causes the rubber to unstick so I just degreased mine and used doubled-sided tape to put it back BUT its not the rubber that vibrates on mine, its the trim.

 

interesting. I'd love to see pictures when you have a chance to post

 

On mine that I recently got they were making noise so I pulled them off, cleaned the old foam tape off (goo gone, plastic scraper, then isoproply alcohol for final cleaning). The foam tape you all are mentioning (usually with a red plastic liner) is 3M VHB (very high bond) mounting tape. You can get small rolls of it at most auto parts stores. I stock it at my sign shop since we often have to reinstall vehicle emblems and moldings which is what those are installed with. Anyways I put a strip of 1/2" wide new VHB tape along the edge that will be against the glass. Also make sure to NOT have Rain X or anything like that on your windshield where it will be stuck to the glass, clean the glass there with a solvent first if you use anything like rain x, then clean with iso alcohol, then dry fit the trip piece, then start just a small corner of the red liner, install the trim piece and put its screws back in, then carefully grab the corner of the red liner you started and pull the rest of the liner off and firmly press along the edge to bond it good to the glass.

You can always remove it later - just run a thin razor knife along the edge of the glass to cut through the VHB foam tape (then replace the VHB foam tape on the trim piece again to reinstall it).

 

For the record mine is a 2005 model year it was 1st registered in 2006 and I'm the 2nd owner. Evidence suggestes the previous owner only had it regularly serviced as there were many other little issues that were never attended to such as front and rear washers not working, lights not working etc

As you can see the rubber strip bonded to the trim. Today I pulled it off and repositioned the strip flush to the edge of the plastic making sure the trim was pressed tightly on to the glass and screwed in position and so far it hasnt rattled again.

 

Very interesting. I've never seen that before. If yours is a RHD, then it was built in S. Africa. They could be little differences like this from local sourcing and other regional requirements. I've now seen 3 versions of this part. Thanks for sharing the pics. Always great to see little differences like this.

 

Living in the UK I wish mine was a RHD, it actually is a Canadian import if that is a clue. The Speedo's main scale is in KPH rather than MPH and I dont know if the MPG is calculated on US gallons or Imperial gallons, another mystery (probably US)

Would love to get hold of some new mirror motor mechanisms, as in the pic, or just the little plastic gears. I have Rapid Prototyped some new resin gears which seem to work OK, but long term I dont know how long they will last.

 

I'd think the gears would not be too tough to scan and recreate in a 3D modeling software and then get some place with a small CNC to machine them out of delrin or some sort of UHMW plastic.

That or do what you possibly did and make a mold of an existing and cast your own with some sort of high strength epoxy.