I have a 1998 P38 diesel with awful creaking and rattling sounds coming mostly from the dash/console area.
I was thinking a possible solve option would be to remove the suspected offending parts and strategically place sticky back draft excluder(guessing it's plastic to plastic noise) and reassemble.
Was wondering if anybody had cured any noises up front or if it's a case of a quick tightening of a couple of areas?
It's driving me mad and I'm finding it hard to live with so any help would be greatly appreciated

i got knocking and rattling noises in my dash, but thats only because me mate braked hard last week while i was counting pound coins, and then 10 pounds slid forward and fell down the windscreen blower grilles.

now it rattles on every corner!!!! how annoying.
now im £10 down and got to listen to that for back ground music. lol

Happy days!!!

Not yet looked at the P38 (although mine creaks and groans from the dash, centre console and the door-cards).

I think in the case of the door cards it's the plastic shell. Where the locating pins clip in, it gets cracked (to the extent my driver's door trim is only held on by about half the clips necessary...I can't fit any more because there is nothing left on the door card to attach them to..!).

Regarding the dash, I pretty successfully silenced a Rover 800 centre console and dash by:

1. Taking it apart as much as possible.
2. Using strong plastic solvent (sold in model shops for assembling plastic kits) to permanently join components that had been heat bonded together. The heat bonding is often done not quite perfectly...hence the creaking.
3. Use a mixture of silicon sealant and foam pads/strips when reassembling components to prevent them rattling against each other.
4. Where screws had been overtightened and thus warped or deformed the plastic, I either repaired with plastic solvent or reinforced with scrap plastic (old credit-cards, yoghurt pots etc all work if the solvent you use is strong enough).
5. Reassemble and make sure all screws are tight but not over-tight...

There are no rules to the above except common-sense, care and time spent working out exactly which bits creak and rattle...

I suspect the main issue on the P38 is that the design and quality of the plastic dash, centre console and door card structure is actually worse than a Rover 800's (or indeed many other cars :-( ), so it probably needs more effort expended...certainly mine has a few cracks at certain stress points.

Cheers,

Malcolm

they did use really **** plastic in the P38. extraordinary given what they were selling them as and at.