Jim_KT

Do you have the "Vacation Pix"? If you don't, do a search for them. It'll help you with everything that you need to do.

I performed this procedure last evening. Start time was 5:00 PM and I was able to finish the test drive at 10:30 PM. The dash removal and reinstall was relatively straight forward. This is more time consuming and tedious than it is difficult. Interior trim removal tools were a life saver. Chris is right. A very likely culprit to the rattles are the dash plugs and their firewall sockets. What I did was remove all of the sockets and put a VERY healthy bead of RTV behind them where they mate with the firewall. Foam padding was also placed inside the sockets just as Chris suggested. I then wrapped the plugs with electrical tape and placed a bead of RTV on them. This removed almost all of the "plasticky" rattles. However, there are some metallic rattles that this procedure did not remove and I will be digging into the dash once again this weekend to hunt them all down. I will also perform the fix per the TSB for good measure. I would like to comment on how Subaru knew that this was a potential area for rattles. The sockets have a very fine sticky-backed foam behind them. Unfortunately, this foam backing had become brittle over time and nearly flaked off when they were removed.

I'm trying that this weekend. Thanks for the detailed photos!

Anything but the S202.

I just replaced the plugs on my LGT at nearly 37k miles. The originals looked good with a slight hint of a lean burn. The driver's side rear coil pack posed no problem with removal. On the other hand, reinstalling it was a pain.