Tail Light Rattle...please help

I just bought a 06 interceptor and I noticed a super annoying problem a couple days after I bought it. The tail light bounces up and down really bad when I go over bumps. I didnt notice it during the test ride or when I rode it home because I was wearing a helmet and head phones. But once I rode it without a helmet, the rattling noise was overwhelming. its the sound of the tail light and trim bouncing up and down hitting the bottom of the seat and the top of the license plate mounting mud flap thing. Has anyone else experienced this? At first it seemed like a design flaw to me since I cant find any screws that arent tight or any pieces that are missing but I find it hard to believe that the engineers at Honda would miss something like this, so something has to be wrong. Ive been doing a lot of internet research but I cant find anything about this being a common problem. If anyone has info they could share with me, or any pictures of what the top and bottom of a properly functioning tail assembly looks like that would be very very helpful. Thanks

 

i had some rattleing from the covers that go over the passenger grap bar bolt points but not the rear light. are you sure its the tail light?

 

yea its the light. once i noticed it i would turn around and look at it over bumps and the whole assembly bounces up and down. i did a lot of trouble shooting on it but i cant figure out why its so loose. the whole rear light section can be tilted up and down with about a 1/2 inch of travel.

 

Mine makes a pretty good racket going over bumps as well, I kinda assumed it was the brake light modulator I have un-secured bouncing around though. Now I gotta go hit some bumps and see it bounce!

 

I have an 07 and don't notice any bouncing/noise, but I do have a Comp. Werkes Fender Eliminator installed.

 

My '04 bounces the way you describe, but it doesn't make any noise. I can grab it and move it up/down at least a half inch. I've had the whole tail apart (for other reasons) and there is nothing loose or missing, it's just the way it is. It does go through a lot of tail light bulbs.

 

do an eliminator and solve the problem......... and, I'll say it......... it was probably the bolts in your head rattling around from not wearing a helmet......just saying......I don't get the draw for not wearing a helmet........ sorry about the derail

 

Lets see if this works..... embedded video

[video=youtube;6q_NibmCh6Y]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q_NibmCh6Y[/video]

 

I have an 04 and my tail moves like in the video above but it does not make any noise. The rattle I hear is from the tool kit under the seat.

 

Wow, that video shows it perfectly. So I worked on it a couple days ago and temporarily solved the problem. I removed the big ugly mud flap (thanks Jabba), and in doing so exposed the license plate mounting bracket. All I did to solve the problem from there was wrapped a zip tie around the top of the tail light and under the license plate bracket and pulled it tight. This obviously isn’t the right way to things, but it was a quick fix and it reduced the taillight movement quite considerably. One thing I noticed when I did this is that the taillight is installed without any rubber grommets. I didn’t take it apart, but from what I can see the tail light is installed by sliding it into the housing. and to keep it from moving up and down once installed, during installation you slide the two poles (that protrude on the back of the light) through the slotted holes on a mounting bracket. My tail light is installed without any rubber grommets in those slotted holes consequently letting the tail light move up and down the distance of the clearance between the male and female parts. Im not sure if my tail section had been taken apart at some point and those rubber grommets were forgotten to be but back in, or if the bike never came with any in the first place. So I guess my next step is to swing by my local Honda dealership and see if they have a part for that spot. If not, ill try to find something at the hardware store that will do the trick. Ill keep you posted on my progress. Thanks for all the feedback…

 

There should be rubber grommets on those "poles". I remember when i was installing my exhaust that I knocked one of them out and had to dive under my work bench to find it. This eliminated much of the movement you are seeing. My guess is that the other people that are experiencing this movement will find these grommets worn out or damaged. I tried to find the part number on the schematics but they're not listed. they look pretty generic though so a trip to the hardware store should fix it.

 

resolution

there were indeed grommets that needed to be installed. i picked them up from my local Honda dealership for 1.25 each, installed them, and most of the bouncing and rattling disappeared. but not totally. i took it for a ride and the tail light was still jumping up and down a bit, so i decided to wrap a zip tie around it as well, to really snug it up. that worked, ive eliminated almost all the movement from the tail light assembly. then finally i wrapped a towel around the tool kit to keep that from clankin around. its now as good as its gonna get i think. thanks everyone for all your input.

 

Good job! Hopefully now that you've tightened everything up and everything is so rigid the first big bump doesn't stress out the plastic in the tail and it snaps off! :heh: