Creaking Hard Top (mopar) solutions

[Jarratt39]

I've been getting excessive creaking from my hard top. It seems to occur regardless of season or temperature. I tried reseating the panels once, but it doesn't seem to have made a difference. I remember seeing a thread somewhere where some had suggested using silicone, or even the soft side of a piece of stick on velcro in certain areas, and that seemed to have worked for them. I was just curious if anyone had any experience with either of those solutions, or what if anything seemed to work best?

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[jbehrn]

I had creaking sound on a prior Gladiator and found that the rubber seals were dirty with a light layer of dust and grim. Cleaning them helped reduce the sound a lot.

 

[NachoRuby]

Silicone spray has always worked fory jeep creaks.

 

[Jarratt39]

Thanks for the tips, will definitely give it a shot

Cheers

 

[Hootbro]

On my second Gladiator and this has been my procedure when they started to creak or rattle.

1. Take off both front Freedom panels.

2. Loosen all rear section hard top mount bolts to include the two up top.

3. Using an actual torque wrench, torque to spec the rear section mount hard top bolts evenly in pairs starting from the inside to outside pattern.

4. Check the top rubber seals the Freedom Panels ride on and if necessary clean with rubber safe cleaner like soapy water.

5. Obtain a quality silicone grease and liberally apply on the top seals and gently wipe down any excess. A silicone dielectric grease can be used. Avoid silicone sprays as the carrier agent can dry out the rubber with very little silicone actually being applied.

6. Check inside the Freedom Panels the matting surface to seal side and clean if necessary.

7. Install and latch Freedom Panels and if necessary, adjust if needed the latch points.

The above has removed about 95% of any squeaking I can attribute to the hardtop. When they install the hardtop at the factory, they do not necessarily bolt it down in even patterns and they can be installed with a torsional stress causing noise.

The downside is once you cure your hardtop squeaks and rattles, it leaves the rest of the interior bits and bobs to drive you crazy trying to track down their noise sources.

 

[Mball488]

My passenger side freedom panel made this clicking, creaking noise when ever I was driving on a bumpy road or if a song had some bass to it. I found that it was coming from the left right side of it near my rear view mirror and when a little upward pressure was put on it, it would stop the noise. I tried everything to make it stop but nothing seemed to work. My solution finally solved it. I took a couple of those small stick on pads that you put on the bottom of chairs and such so they wont scratch hardwood floors (the carpet feeling ones) and wedged it where I put pressure with my fingers and boom.. haven't heard a creak since and its not enough to break the seal of the freedom panel. Another source my buddy had was that whole known broken visor mount that everyone gets, before it broke completely his was vibrating around causing a similar noise.

 

[Alc]

Solution:
1. Remove two top front panels

2. With a small bucket of soapy water (Dawn dish detergent) wipe all the rubber seals clean with a damp wet soapy cloth from bucket.
A. Ensure you climb up and get the rubber seal above the windscreen
B. Ensure you get the rubber seal on the rear large section of the rear box of the freedom top above the sound bar.
3. Using a dab of Adam’ Silica Infused VR (on Amazon) on a clean dry cloth, apply to all the recently cleaned rubber seals.

= no more creaking from the freedom top roof panels.

 

[nyyankees]

shinetzu grease on the rubber pieces has fixed it for me. its on amazon

 

[tobyw]

Mine has started to develop a tapping noise at higher speeds, say above 50mph that drives me crazy, almost sounds like bugs hitting the windshield... I wonder if it's time to clean the seals, my roof panels have never been off ?

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