During my lunch break at work today I took a quick drive to my local Wild Birds Unlimited shop to buy a case of "Woodpecker’s Delight" suet cakes for my suet feeders for the winter.  I’ve been re-adjusting the layout of the feeders in the front yard here at Casa del Garrett for another try at defeating the local squirrels, and I’m hoping I can attract the variety of woodpeckers again this winter that I did last.  And of course, it was an excuse to drive Traveler, my new Mercedes-Benz C300 somewhere.

I was about halfway up I-83 to to the beltway when I noticed a rattle coming from somewhere in the back of the car.  I waited for a while for it to go away.  I tried ignoring it.  I tried to think if I had anything stored in any of the rear door armrests but I knew I didn’t.  I’ve been keeping that car spotless inside.  I tried cocking my ears this way and that to zero in on where exactly it was coming from and couldn’t tell exactly…just that it was coming from somewhere around the area of the rear window.  I tried raising and lowering the rear window sun screen a few times, but that didn’t solve it, nor change the tone of the rattle one bit.   I tried raising and lowering both the rear windows.  The rattle didn’t go away.

When I got to Wild Birds and parked I opened a back door and got in the rear seat and looked around for something, anything, that I could see might be obviously causing the rattling sound.  But there wasn’t anything.  I checked the seatbelts, poked and pressed at some of the upholstery and door panels, tapped on the rear deck paneling around the speaker moldings.  It all seemed as solid as the day I bought the car.  This had all the makings of one of those perfectly annoying car rattles that just drive you nuts until you find it.  Every car I’ve ever owned has had one of those.  But this wasn’t just any car.  It was my brand new Mercedes-Benz.

The last thing in the world I wanted was to know beyond any doubt that my brand new 45 thousand dollar car had a rattle in it.  Other then an outright mechanical failure, there wouldn’t be much more then that to demolish my sense of pride in owning a work of Mercedes-Benz rock solidness.  One of the delights I’ve had in the past few weeks in just driving that car somewhere, anywhere, is its exceptional feel of solidity as you drive it down the road.  That’s always been one thing in which a Mercedes-Benz is quite unlike any other car, except maybe the rarefied hand built cars of the super rich like the Bentley and Rolls.  A Mercedes sedan is a bit stogy, but solid as a rock, over engineered and high performing in a way its looks don’t advertise…the ultimate techno geek car when you think about it.  No way could it have a rattle. 

But that was what Mercedes-Benz was.  In the 1990s they stopped being that, to the discontent of many.  Then some years ago they owned up to it, and promised to start building them like they used to.  For the last couple of years it seemed like they had finally turned a corner.  They divorced Chrysler, they got rid of the CEO who led them downward in quality for the sake of his grandiose dream of making Mercedes the world’s biggest auto maker.  And I wanted so much to believe.

I bought my case of suet and barely looked at the other merchandise.  I was preoccupied.  Does the warranty cover rattles…?  No way was I going to allow my Mercedes to have a rattle.  Tolerating it was absolutely not an option.  Mercedes-Benz Don’t Rattle Goddammit.  I will Not allow it!  On the way back down I-83 the rattle returned like a chicken coming home to roost.  I was getting depressed.  I’ve owned a junker or two in my time and I know the sound of a rattle that isn’t going away until you track it down and fix it.  And the more I listened to it, the more it sounded like something coming from inside a panel somewhere.

I drove back to work in a funk.  This month I have many other things going on at work to occupy my mind.  Back home again in the evening, I logged into the servers at the Institute and did a little more work.  After rush hour had settled down a tad I walked out to the car, sat down in the driver’s seat, and thought about it.  I sat there in a funk for a few minutes.  Who do I know that I can get to sit in the back seat and isolate a rattle for me while I drive the car…?  All afternoon at work I’d been trying to debug a set of server configuration problems that were keeping me from getting some things done I’d needed to get done.  So my mood wasn’t exactly serene and peaceful.  But now that debugging mind frame I’d been in all afternoon took charge of my little rattle problem…

Let’s step through this…  Where’s the rattle coming from?  The back of the car.  What’s in the back of the car?

Well…the trunk of course.  I got out and opened the trunk.  Inside my trunk I have several items.  One is a big canvas pouch I bought at a truck stop ages ago.  It’s supposed to hang off one of the front seat headrest pillars down the seatback, and it has big pockets to hold a roll of paper towels, bottles of cleaner, a flashlight maps and other miscellaneous items.  I wasn’t about to hang it off the back of one of Traveler’s seats, so I put it in the trunk.  The other item is a small Rubbermaid container that holds my emergency kit…road flares, duct tape, tire sealant, heavy duty jumper cables, a large APC 12 volt DC to 120 volt AC power converter, a bright orange safety poncho and a few miscellaneous tools.  Also in the trunk was my window squeegee, the first aid kit that came with the car, the one I already had, and the spare wiper blades.  The first aid kit that came with the car was stowed in a compartment on the side of the trunk, behind one of the rear wheels, along with the spare wiper blades.  I took all of this out of the trunk, started up Traveler and took it for another drive up I-83. 

The rattle was gone.  Absolutely gone.  Back was the cozy quiet I’d fallen in love with the first time I drove the car from Baltimore to Washington.  I drove a short loop up I-83 and back and the inside of the car was as quiet and serene as before. 

One at a time I reintroduced the items back into the trunk, exactly where they were before, and did the same drive up and back on I-83 again.  Eventually I discovered it was the spare wiper blades.  They’re made of a very flexible rubber/plastic compound and they’d wedged themselves into a position where they were vibrating against the metal walls of the storage compartment they were in.  In Mercedes’ defense, that’s not where they were when I bought the car.  When I bought the car the spare wiper blades had been stowed in the front passenger seat map holder.  I didn’t think that was an appropriate place for them, so I put them in that side compartment in the trunk with the first aid kit.

From now on, the spare wiper blades go in the Rubbermaid container.