So wife's '15 Renegade Trailhawk has been getting louder and louder inside, rattling quite loudly when in gear stopped with the foot on the brake or with the parking brake engaged. Finally we empted all of the extra storage around the spare tire and it was still doing it, eventually I managed to confirm that the worst of the interior noise was coming from the rear hatch itself, and putting pressure on the lower interior panel mitigated it. I pulled the panel off, broke half of the clips, and on driving without the panel the noise was significantly reduced. Exhaust or something in the driveline is still an issue, but driving around a week without the interior door card installed on the liftgate was much quieter. To fix it I took a two-pronged approach. First, the clips (even the six that remained intact) don't fit tightly into the interior panel slots. They can themselves rattle-around in the slots. I experimented and found I could put a Number 10 o-ring in the part of the clip that slides into the plastic panel and this significantly reduced the play. The old ones on our '15 are these black units that were apparently superceded by a new green unit, part number 68398599AA. Got a bunch of these from the dealer, put O-rings on them as well. Second approach, I bought some 1/8" edging material, and wrapped it around the entire permeter of the lower panel except wher the lower panel meets the upper panel at the top corners. The fit is incredibly tight despite the interior panel being 0.115" and the 1/8" trim theoretically being 0.125". The reason for this trim, it was clear the plastic panel had been vibrating on the lower part of the liftgate, there was yellow paint on it and scuffing on the liftgate in the corresponding spot. Installation of the interior panel was more work than expected, I started at the spots where it meets the upper panel and just worked my way around, pushing all of the clips into their respective holes. The only visible change: View attachment upload_2020-10-14_21-16-22.png If you think back to how older vehicles weree built, this sort of thing was relatively common. The exterior rattles, presumably the exhaust, is still fairly pronounced, but it no longer sounds like one's sitting inside of a speaker being stress-tested. Total money spent, around $30.
