Yet another wind noise thread, what has worked so far for me

[meshugy]

The Rivian tech also told me a lot of wind noise is generated by having panels which aren’t flush. In fact, he said each panel should be slightly inset as you go from front to back which prevents anything from sticking out.

Sponsored

 

[Blueassassin]

You can masking tape all the gaps drive. see if it improves if it does start removing piece by piece and that will identify the area to concentrate on.

I found mine was a triangle window and they replaced the gasket. I also did the round gasket inserted in the door gaskets didn't see that much improvement.

 

[DayTripping]

I've pretty much sealed the door. I've done the trimlok, extra seals, etc. For me it is more about hearing the wind buffeting than an air leak. I've done a lot to smooth the airflow where the windshield meets the roof. I've listened while driving, and most of the noise still the A pillar and it does it on both sides. Of course, it's worse on the driver's side.

I totally taped over the triangle window and it didn't seem to make much difference. You can hear the buffeting outside the windshield on the left side by the A pillar and if you listen along the door, you can hear it by the A pillar. All the buffeting seems to be there.

At this point, if I had known it would be this bad, I would have never bought the truck. If you never drive much over 70, you'd never know. While I love the truck, this might be its fatal flaw for me.

I am running out of things to try at this point. I can try even more to smooth along the A pillar. I definitely cleaned that area up and the buffeting is still there though reduced. To give you an idea, it is like listening to a flag flapping in the breeze outside your window.

At this point, it has made me rethink buying other Rivians, possibly selling mine and going with something else. I can't see owning a truck that, if the airspeed meets or exceeds 75 mph, I'll have to deal with the buffeting. Even the Cyberdumpster wasn't anywhere near this bad.

It most likely is due to lousy panel alignment and it is with the glass. Before I'd give my truck a B overall. The addition of Comma 3X bumped my satisfaction to A-. This continued noise issue has dropped it down to a D- for my driving conditions. Personally, when I am down to a C- on an expensive vehicle, I'll sell it and move on. I have one last thing to try: the yarn tuft testing. It is a lot of hassle set up and test. Then I have to try things like wind deflectors and vortex generators to see if it makes a difference.

At this point, I'd caution anyone considering a Rivian, or taking delivery of a new one, to drive it at higher speeds to see how bad the wind noise is before you take delivery. In all fairness, mine may not be that bad now, unfortunately, I've become very sensitized to it. Someone else might think mine is great compared to theirs. I'll admit that is a possibility as the actual sound levels aren't super high. I didn't get a chance to use my more accurate sound metering app, but my apple watch's app said it was 64-65 db at 75 mph. I don't know what weighting Apple uses. I've used the NIOSH SLM app with success in the past.

All my work has made a difference; however, it isn't far enough for me. It really is a shame. They clearly need to address this issue through the factory as many trucks have it. It is most likely a fitment issue. If you watch the vid I posted earlier, the truck that was scanned had an assembly defect significant to affect the modeling. I've linked the appropriate time in the vid below where you can actually see the impact on the airflow.

 

[iansriv]

I was curious about the drag coefficient on the R1. Apparently it's .28, which compared to a MB EQS SUV (.26) isn't that bad for something that is so brick-like in shape. I've seen a few reviews on the EQS and everyone talks about how quiet it is. So, the issue appears to be more about fitment or lack thereof, on our R1s.

As an aside the MB EQS sedan is .20, Tesla 3 is .23 and the Lucid Air is a brilliant .197!

 

[DayTripping]

Theoretically, I would say the Rivian is what they claim. In practice, with the crappy fitment, it hurts that number. As mentioned, this impacts the noise and efficiency.

FYI - the R1S has a better drag coefficient at .28 vs the R1T .30 so you'd think it would get better efficiency on the highway. I've heard from many that it is the reverse, that T>S for efficiency.

 

[DayTripping]

This might be the best improvement of any single change I've done. I filled both of these grooves with uxcell EPDM foam tubing. Don't ask me what sizes as they were left over pieces I had. One wasn't long enough to go the entire way but covered about 95% of it. I think the smaller one was about 3mm and the other was about 4 or 5mm. I basically bought ever size of 2mm to 10mm to work over my truck.

I might have finally gotten to the point I don't want an asteroid to fall on my truck so I can buy something else. More drives will be needed but I drove it up to 85 today and it was better than before. I did have tailwind that was hitting the truck from the right rear quarter at about a 45 degree angle. My worst noise is typically when there he is a head/crosswind coming across the driver's side A pillar at the same angle so this was about 180 degrees opposite of that so it might have actually helped to suppress the noise.

On my return trip it became the kinds of winds that are most problematic for my truck but traffic was too slow to go over 70 long enough to tell.

I would encourage people to start here but it also might be that the other things I've done have made this more effective.

Overall, even when I am not at speeds where the wind buffeting is annoying, the cockpit is quieter overall. Road noise is now more obvious since it isn't being drowned out by wind noise. You can't win with this truck.

I have to buy more tubing and complete the run totally and I'll do that once I confirm that this is helping as much as I think it might.

For reference, on my appl watch, with my hand at the 10 o'clock position, I was reading 63-64 db. I need to make some runs with NIOSH SLM which I find to be more accurate but as a reference, my sound level is down about 1 db from where I was at previously when traveling at 75 mph. So I am going faster, and it is still is quieter. The trend is in the right direction.

 

[akc5247]

There are lots of threads here on wind noise as I can't stand the wind noise. It ruins an otherwise amazing truck. At times, it has bothered me so much I've thought about dumping the truck. Even to the point of buying a Cyberdumpster. I do mean that seriously. I even drove one again to see if its wind noise is as bad as most of the Rivians I’ve driven.

TL;DR I never found a magic bullet. I adopted the "Atomic Habits" approach; many little incremental improvements add up. All Rivians I drove had wind noise issues. The Cyberdumpster is better with wind noise. Still work to be done.

Some things to note. Rivian limits the trucks during demo drives to 80 mph in my area. That may seem like a reasonable speed for a test drive. My issue is that the wind noise doesn’t manifest itself until an airspeed of at least 75 mph. So, if you have a slight tail wind, even if you’re doing 80, you won’t get the wind noise. Factor in the hours the Rivian store is open, and you typically have a clogged highway, so it might be hard to get over even 60 mph.

Where I live, the speed limits are relatively high, and traffic can be running 80 mph or more. So, depending on my trip, I can spend a lot of time at these higher speeds where the wind noise is really bad. Add in a crosswind and it’s even worse.

I combed through all the wind noise posts, looking for what might be a magic bullet. There’s a lot of talk about the little triangle window being an issue, other fit issues, window calibration, etc. I doubt anyone has read more pages of wind noise mitigation than me on this forum. Not to mention all the other Internet sources I read.

Since obviously a lot of trucks have issues, I took my truck to Rivian to have them look at it, of course, they did nothing. They will not drive it on the highway fast enough or long enough to reproduce the sound. It is possible but unlikely. They’d have to find a gap in the traffic to even do it. Basically, I got the truck back in the same way as I did before, too noisy to tolerate at higher speeds.

The noise was so bad that whenever I started to hear the noise, I would subconsciously slow down. So that meant some days I’ll be driving 80 mph on the highway when I have a tailwind, other days 65 mph when I have a headwind. The wind noise impacted my speed more than traffic did.

I had a chance to drive some other Rivian, and I found out that every one I drove did it, even Gen 2 trucks. They all could be pretty quiet at lower speeds and some worse than others, but I could hear it in all of them. For me, it is one of those things that once I hear it, I can’t un-hear it if you know what I mean. Maybe you’re lucky to have one that doesn’t have a lot of noise, or maybe it doesn’t bother you.

I tried some of the fixes I read about. Actually, I tried a lot of the fixes individually, and none of them were a magic bullet. So I decided to start from scratch. I went through and inspected all the seams along the windows, the sunroof, the windshield, etc. What I learned is Rivian’s quality control in these areas is pretty crappy. Worse than any of my Teslas TBH. When I went to address the issues, I found it was was even worse than what I initially thought.

To cover the wide variance in gaps, I bought every EPDM foam tube size from 2 mm to 10 mm and started working every gap along the windshield, sunroof, windows, etc. That’s when I realized that they couldn’t even get the gap even on a lot of the places.

There might be a section along the windshield where I needed a 6 mm piece of foam to fill it at the bottom but would taper so much at the top a 2 mm one wouldn’t even fit. I had sections along the sunroof that it was so tight on one side I couldn’t even fit a knife blade, while on the other side, I had about a 6 mm gap. If the gap isn’t consistent, I would have to step the size as a foam because it was too tight that I couldn’t squeeze in a bigger piece. So every gap, because of the step in tubing size, would create an area of turbulent air on top of it.

I even went to the trouble of shimming the window and door seals on the driver‘s door. Then I added additional sealing around that, then added another seal outside of the seal that I put in.

I basically took the approach of Atomic Habits. A great book if you haven’t read it. Taking the approach that a lot of small gains might add up to something substantial, even though one on its own might not really matter that much, but cumulatively it would make a difference.

I spent over five hours yesterday going through my truck and trying to seal every gap that I possibly could. I had EPDM round foam tubing, I had a little rubber T seal, rounded weather stripping, L-shaped seals, and more, and a variety of sizes. I bought over $200 worth of materials from Amazon to attack this once and for all.

A quick sidebar on the Cyberdumpster that I drove. I drove it up to about 85 mph, it had wind noise too. But it was markedly less than what Rivian had. It was less intense and at a more tolerable frequency. It did start a bit earlier, about 60 airspeed, but a lot less intrusive, even if it was noticeable.

I let everything set overnight to make sure it would bond. I took great care to clean all the surfaces and wipe with alcohol. This morning I had the opportunity to go out and try it out on the highway. It was hard to wait to see if it had made a difference. Would the wind noise still be there?

Simple answer is – yep, the noise is still there. Can Rivian kick rocks? Yes! Were the five hours I spent and $200 worth of material worth the effort? I would have to say it’s a qualified yes. It didn’t reduce the noise a lot at 75 mph airspeed, but it is noticeable. There was an unexpected result. I did reduce it at 75 mph. Instead of the wind noise really ramping up as I went faster, it seemed more like the wind noise had sort of plateaued and didn’t get any louder (or marginally so) than what it was at 75 mph. If I drove 75, 80, 85, or 90, the wind noise was still pretty much the same as it was at 75. The frequency of the sound was a bit lower, which also made it easier to tolerate. On the flip side, the road noise is more obvious now. I don’t really want to load my truck up with Dynamat if I don’t have to.

It remains to be seen whether I can live with it long-term. I’m going to have to drive it some more and see. I have a few other things to try. I haven’t done any wind tuft testing to check the airflow. I can also change out some of the molding with a different style to see if that helps. There is another door seal I ordered that hasn’t arrived yet that I wanted to try.

I believe almost all of my noise issues are due to the sloppy way the glass and trim were put in. My truck is a 3/2023 build and they clearly didn’t have they sht together yet. I am not sure they really do yet either based on the G2 trucks I drove. To make most of this right, my windshield and pano roof would need to be reset. I didn’t have some of the other trim issues people have but these are two big ones. Most of the noise seems to be coming from the top of the windshield and the A pillars. You can hear the buffeting outside the truck. It isn’t from any sort of air gaps that I can hear, or the driver's door window not sealing.

If my truck was at this noise level to begin with, I probably wouldn’t have started chasing it. Now I am sensitized to it after 6k miles and I have to do all I can within reason to eliminate it. I am sure there will be a bunch of people who come along and say their truck has no issue. Well, good for them. Based on the amount of content on the Internet about this, I am clearly not the only one. Even on this forum, search for wind noise in the thread title and there are multiple pages of people with issues.

My Model S Plaid has less wind noise at 200 mph than my R1T does at 75 mph, literally. For those of you that have this issue, I’d say there is hope. Just be patient, and look for all the gaps and start filling them. For anyone considering buying a Rivian, drive it at higher speeds into a headwind and a crosswind. I’d say mine is now amongst the better ones I’ve driven but that is damning it with faint praise. The improvement I’ve realized is significant, but there was a long way to go. I’ve talked to many other forum members who just gave up. For such an aerodynamic truck, this shouldn’t be such an issue. The noise is typically indicative of turbulence or boundary layer issues. This hurts the efficiency of the truck. The changes I’ve made could improve efficiency at higher speeds. Likely to be no difference at 50 mph, but around 70 and up, it might be measurable.

If you’ve stuck around this far, and have successfully treated your noise issue, I’d love to hear what you did in case I missed anything. I am going to chase the seal under the hood as well, and a few other areas. I’ll be doing yarn tuft testing when I can get someone to video the truck as I drive. I might need to put in vortex generators to help.

Here is a great vid to help you visualize the airflow of the truck. I referred to it many times as I was creating my plan of attack.

Oh, yeah, even after all the fixes I have done (you can find my pictures and before after stuff on the larger Wind noise fix thread), I still can't tolerate the noise above 75/80mph.

So, I'm going to probably do more seal plugs and crap once the summer comes.

Driving me nuts but I also realize this is a black hole so I'm trying to limit as to how many years I can spend on fixing these sound issues. It is what it is.

But it should absolutely be better, for a vehicle at this price point.

 

[DayTripping]

I've continued to go down the black hole of noise reduction. I've made more progress. I am also including a photo of when I was coming back and had a headwind that was at least 20 mph, frequently gusting to about 35-40 mph. After that, there is a video showing my Apple Watch indicating the sound level when there was a quartering tailwind/crosswind.

The immediate photos show the soundproofing I did. Earlier in this thread I showed where I was going to put some but I kept sizing up to where I am now. All this includes putting seals along the windshield and filling in almost every crack I could on the roof. They don't show the tubing I put inside the window seal to put more pressure on it.

1 - I think this was about 10mm and in the outer door seal.
2 - I think I settled on 6mm on the inner door seal and fan it parallel to the outer one, all the way from the mirror to the end. I kept them both a bit long in case they shrink in the heat.
3 - This was 10mm again looping around the ENTIRE door seal, tucked behind the original door seal.
4 - This was an 'L' shaped seal put on the inside of the original factory seal on the door frame.
5 - I don't know what size I ended up with here but this was put along the door frame and is heavy duty rubber. I ran it all the from from the edge of the door frame by the mirror, up across the top and all the way to the top of the rear door.

Compared to the runs I made yesterday, I've seen a 3db noise reduction on my apple watch. This is pretty substantial. Even at 70 mph, my cockpit is quieter. Road noise is now more evident as it isn't being drowned out by the wind. I ran over different pavement and the level jumped up 2 db while at the same speed.

FYI - I did have the AC running as well and the radio was off. I do have to say the door is more challenging to close but I think things will settle in after a bit. While the driver door is better, I will probably do the front passenger door too.

I ran up to 90 mph with the strong head winds, so that was airspeeds of 110-120+. It was definitely quieter than before. The wind buffeting is clearly subdued compared to before but I need to drive it more long-term to see how it is for me. I also need to glue some of the trim down as it was a press fit before and the high speed caused some of it come out and I hadn't glued it as I hadn't settled on the best size yet.

I still think it is total BS I need to do something like this. From what I've read, I think I've gone way beyond what anyone else has done and chased some new areas as well. The buffeting is still there, but it may be livable (I hope). Now the road noise is clearly evident. I think it needs felt in the wheel wells but I don't think I am going down that rabbit hole... yet.

This photo was going 70 mph according to GPS but in a headwind that was 20 mph gusting to at least 35 mph.

This video was taken with a 10+ mph crosswind and tailwind (about a 45 degree angle off the right rear quarter).

 

[DayTripping]

I think I am calling it a day on noise reduction, at least for the driver's side. I fiddled around with a few other things, and tweaked what I already installed a bit. I made a run this evening and at 80 mph I was 61-63 db , with a headwind of 10 mph, minimum gusting to 16. So airspeed of at least 90 mph and gusting higher.

The sad part about all this is I can now hear GD noise coming from the passenger side. I am not going to the extent I did on my side as the door might be too challenging for my family to close it completely. It definitely takes more force to get it to close completely. My overall noise might go down a bit when I quash it on the passenger side. As expected, other sounds are more prevalent since the wind noise has been somewhat mitigated.

The photo below captures the higher end but that was more due to the pavement where the noise jumped 1-2 db. I couldn't capture it in time when it was hovering around 61 and then traffic got in the way so I called it quits.

I think the frequency of the road noise might be harder to tolerate than the wind buffeting.

I also don't know what kind of weight the Apple watch does but I figured I"d use it since many might have one and can easily compare. I am going to make some runs with NIOSH SLM later this week which is a very good iPhone app. From the few times I tested it, it was showing a few db higher than the watch so just use my watch readings for comparison's sake, not absolute values.

Regardless I've made significant progress at this point. Absolutely can still hear the buffeting but is more subdued. I have to go back and use sealant to make my work more permanent. I'll drive it for a few thousand miles and see how my fixes are holding up. At least now I have a baseline and a good reference route to consistently test with.

If they truck had these noise levels to start with, I likely could have lived with it. I am still pretty sensitized to the noise and have acute hearing. A nice by product is the stereo sounds better and I had to adjust my EQ settings as well.

I almost love my truck again...

For reference, here is a noise level chart from Yale.

 

[FLTANK]

If you’re experiencing a buffeting noise at high speed and haven’t yet inspected the plastic trim panels underneath the vehicle I’d highly recommend it. What sounded like noise coming from my roof area was actually wind noise from loose plastic trim panels beneath the truck on my drivers side. I also implemented many of the other fixes mentioned above which helped but securing the underbody trim panels eliminated the buffeting entirely in my case.

 

[DayTripping]

If you’re experiencing a buffeting noise at high speed and haven’t yet inspected the plastic trim panels underneath the vehicle I’d highly recommend it. What sounded like noise coming from my roof area was actually wind noise from loose plastic trim panels beneath the truck on my drivers side. I also implemented many of the other fixes mentioned above which helped but securing the underbody trim panels eliminated the buffeting entirely in my case.

You are killing me here. Now I am going to have to check that out too as it is really hard to let go.

Are you talking about the one by the jack pucks?

 

[FLTANK]

There are a few different panels that overlap so you really just need to push/tap around and it will be obvious if something is loose. In one area the screws holding a panel were just loose and needed a quick tightening but in another location which was basically the long panel between the two jack puck points I added some double sided tape to hold the overlapping panels together to prevent the buffeting.

 

[DayTripping]

Thanks, I'll check those out tomorrow when I have time. Yet another place to deal with on this truck.

 

[akc5247]

I've continued to go down the black hole of noise reduction. I've made more progress. I am also including a photo of when I was coming back and had a headwind that was at least 20 mph, frequently gusting to about 35-40 mph. After that, there is a video showing my Apple Watch indicating the sound level when there was a quartering tailwind/crosswind.

The immediate photos show the soundproofing I did. Earlier in this thread I showed where I was going to put some but I kept sizing up to where I am now. All this includes putting seals along the windshield and filling in almost every crack I could on the roof. They don't show the tubing I put inside the window seal to put more pressure on it.

1 - I think this was about 10mm and in the outer door seal.
2 - I think I settled on 6mm on the inner door seal and fan it parallel to the outer one, all the way from the mirror to the end. I kept them both a bit long in case they shrink in the heat.
3 - This was 10mm again looping around the ENTIRE door seal, tucked behind the original door seal.
4 - This was an 'L' shaped seal put on the inside of the original factory seal on the door frame.
5 - I don't know what size I ended up with here but this was put along the door frame and is heavy duty rubber. I ran it all the from from the edge of the door frame by the mirror, up across the top and all the way to the top of the rear door.

Compared to the runs I made yesterday, I've seen a 3db noise reduction on my apple watch. This is pretty substantial. Even at 70 mph, my cockpit is quieter. Road noise is now more evident as it isn't being drowned out by the wind. I ran over different pavement and the level jumped up 2 db while at the same speed.

FYI - I did have the AC running as well and the radio was off. I do have to say the door is more challenging to close but I think things will settle in after a bit. While the driver door is better, I will probably do the front passenger door too.

I ran up to 90 mph with the strong head winds, so that was airspeeds of 110-120+. It was definitely quieter than before. The wind buffeting is clearly subdued compared to before but I need to drive it more long-term to see how it is for me. I also need to glue some of the trim down as it was a press fit before and the high speed caused some of it come out and I hadn't glued it as I hadn't settled on the best size yet.

I still think it is total BS I need to do something like this. From what I've read, I think I've gone way beyond what anyone else has done and chased some new areas as well. The buffeting is still there, but it may be livable (I hope). Now the road noise is clearly evident. I think it needs felt in the wheel wells but I don't think I am going down that rabbit hole... yet.

This photo was going 70 mph according to GPS but in a headwind that was 20 mph gusting to at least 35 mph.

This video was taken with a 10+ mph crosswind and tailwind (about a 45 degree angle off the right rear quarter).

Nice work!

One thing I wanted to let you know that - it may or may not happen - but the 5mm location tends to come off or become loose after ~6 months. I replaced mine with the adhesive backing one. Currently my R1S is in the service center, will post a pic once it is back.

 

[akc5247]

I think it needs felt in the wheel wells but I don't think I am going down that rabbit hole... yet.

Absolutely the major point.

I replaced my wheels couple months back with Micheline Defender LTX (21"), around 28,000 miles. I think the road noise has increased, but can't quantify it.

Adding felt/ dynamat in wheel wells is something I still consider, and have plenty of left over dynamat as well. I'm not sure if i'm ready yet though.. it may be too much work for little returns.

Sponsored