Crazy dashboard rattle/buzz

[riverguy]

1999 Town Car, super condition, 100K miles. At a stop, there's this annoying rattling that seems to be coming from around the instrument cluster. I happens when the car is stopped and in gear. It's louder when stopped in an uphill position, and I can best describe the noise as sounding like (when speedos had cables) a rattling speedo cable. The noise increases in frequency with engine rpm. So I'm stopped at a signal with my foot on the brake, and if I apply a tiny bit of throttle to just increase the rpms by a hundred or so, the frequency of the rattle clearly increases with the rpms. Sometimes it gets louder then, too. It's been doing it for months now, and keeps happening more often. Now it's almost (but not every) time I come to a stop.

It's making me crazy. Before I disassemble the entire dash looking for the source, I'm just wondering if anyone else has experienced the same thing.

Thank you!

 

[walnut777]

i had a crown vic about the same year model 98 i think it was and it had a weird rattling and it was one of the air vents. there was a TSB on it. i swapped it with one from a junkyard and problem solved. i hope your issue is as simple.