Dale_K

Hi, my first post here.

I bought a new 2012 two door with the soft top less than a week ago. My main use is scenic driving with the top open. When I use the feature to flip the front section back I get a nice view of the scenery but there's an irritating whistle that sounds just like a little bird singing a song - kind of warbling. I can't exactly tell where it's coming from but it sounds like above the passenger windshield. Definitely somewhere on the right side and high.

I bought some masking tape and covered the gap between the windshield glass and painted frame along the top and right side of the windshield but it didn't make any difference.

Are there any well known items that can make the whistling sound that I can maybe fix myself instead of taking it back to the dealer?

Oh, and a couple of pictures of my new Jeep.

dave810

Really???? have you never had a vehicle before without a sun roof? have you ever driven with the windows down? Any time you change the design than the areodynamics change as well. The sound is because with the top down the inside of the jeep becomes a low pressure zone. wind coming over the windshield fills in this zone which creates turbulance and noise.

Dale_K

I've driven tons of convertibles including a Wrangler a few years back. I've never had one that whistled like a songbird before. I really doubt it's a normal noise and found some threads where folks had a whistle after a windshield replacement. That's why I tried the masking tape around the edge of the glass.

Still looking for an answer. Guess I might have to take it to the dealer. I just thought it might be a well known problem with an easy fix.

Dale_K

I worked on the whistle today and sort of figured out where it's coming from. I tried removing the FM antenna but that wasn't it. When I put my head up near the top of the windshield while driving it definitely seemed to be coming from the top edge.

So I tried covering up the rubber seal along the top edge by putting down a piece of 2" masking tape. Here's a picture.



The whistle went away when I took it for a test drive. Wow, what a difference. The Jeep is terrifically more pleasant because the whistle is loud and annoying.

I had a theory that the little vent holes in the rubber seal might have been acting like a whistle so I tried covering them up like this...



That didn't do any good and the whistle came back. I going to the dealer tomorrow and talk to them about it.

Dale_K

I went to the dealer this morning. At first they say there's nothing they can do. I told them I would accept the idea that maybe every Wrangler has a whistle but I'd need to hear another new one before I would call it quits. So I drove another 2012 Wrangler and it had a very small whistle - about 1/10th as loud as mine. We parked the 2 Jeeps side by side and you could see the rubber seals on the windshield header were mounted at different heights. My car's seal projected above the metal frame while the quiet one was sort of countersunk.

The service manager gets the main guy who works on tops to go on a ride with me to hear it for himself. We get up to 45 and he says "I can see how that would be annoying". So he reports back to the service manager and now I'm set up for a service visit next week.

The initial brush-off left me kind of dissapointed with service department. They could have handled it better because all I wanted was for a tech to take a ride and listen to it. Once they did that the tech told the service manager "it's loud".

I hope they can fix it. As you can tell, the noise really bothers me. I told the tech I would personally give hiim a $50 tip if he can get rid of it.

Dale_K

I guess I'm basically talking to myself in this thread, lol, but I've got a half-assed solution. I found that one strip of black electrical tape across the seam between the metal windshield frame and the rubber seal would eliminate about 3/4 of the whistle noise. Trouble is the tape won't stick to the rubber - I think the rubber is impregnated with silicone. So I bought some 2" duct tape and ran it over the front of the seal, then used a piece of 5/8" backer rod to keep the tape tight on the back side. I tried a piece of backer rod alone (even tried 2 glued together) but it had no affect. The sound comes from the rubber to metal seal, not the U shapped section of the seal.

Of course I'll have to remove the foam backer rod when I close the top up.



You can't really notice it standing in front of the Jeep. This picture kind of exagerrates it because the camera is held very high.



After I got the warbeling whistle kind of under control I turned my attention to another whistle that builds up at highway speeds (the other whistle is loudest at 45mph). Originally I thought it was the ends of the top bows where the plastic slider pieces are exposed at their end into the wind but I discovered that this second whistle went away when I put my hand on my head while driving. It turns out this second whistle is coming from the header clamps. If I put some of the same 2" duct tape over the lower part of the clamp the whistle completely stopped. Here's a picture. I'm not going to leave it this way but at least I know where it's coming from and I can try to come up with something not as ugly. Maybe some black weatherstripping foam.

zeppo

Good job isolating the whistles, better job getting the dealership service guys to actually listen to you.

Good luck with a reasonable solution.

Oh, congrats on the new Jeep.

CdnJeepDan

Turn up the stereo.

Dale_K

I worked on this some more this week without totally fixing it. I bought the Wade windshield air deflector and I had great hopes it would eliminate the whistle but it didn't. There might have been a slight reduction. I put it up temporarily with blackd duct tape like this.


Then I went crazy with masking tape trying to cover up every possible whistle source like this. I also took off the wiper blades and antenna but nothing works.


It still whistles and it's making me sad. I took off all the tape and the deflector and bought some screen door seal that I'm going to put between the windshield and frame. I might have to sell this thing if I can't get it figured out. It's gotten to the point that all I think about is the whistle when I'm driving. Sort of OCD.