My wife has recently complained about new whistling noises coming from the back seat area when the A/C is in auto mode and cranked up to high. Initially I thought she was just being paranoid but I've heard them as well when driving the car over the last couple of days. In our previous vehicles, any new strange A/C noise has originated from the vents inside the dashboard, but not this one. It may be playing tricks with our ears but the noise is definitely behind us, appearing to come from the back seat rear deck area. When you turn down the blower speed, the noise disappears....

Very strange. Has anyone else experienced this? If so, what was the cause and the fix?

By the way, the A/C is working just fine. It's close to 100 degrees outside today and the system is cooling the cabin as well and as fast as it always has....

 

Hi Jon,

It sounds like (pardon the pun) like harmonic vibration. Have you lowered the back seats to see if the noise still occurs? The workaround appears to be setting the a/c fan speed to something less than full blast. At least the a/c works pretty well. That's one thing I really like about my 05 S-Type. Even in the mid 90s or even in the 100s it really cools things off. I have had to turn my fan down or adjust the temperature because it sometimes got too cool for me.

Good luck

Mike

 

Good idea, Mike. I'll drop the back seats to their level position and see if that makes any difference in the cabin noise. This is an intermittent issue, by the way....

 

Dropping the rear seats reduced the pitch of the A/C noise and allowed for much more of it to be absorbed into the trunk, but unfortunately the unusual A/C noise remains. I'll add this item to my latest warranty punch list and see if the dealership can isolate and eliminate the problem. It doesn't bother me since I have my CDs playing 95% of the time when I'm driving solo, but it bothers my wife since she's on the damn phone 95% of the time when she's driving solo....

 

Hi Jon,

If your wife is so busy on the phone yakking, how can she hear the a/c whistling noise? I would have thought her priorities would have been phone, driving and then the a/c. Sounds like my wife, she does so many things in the car that driving is lucky to be in the top five.

Mike

 

She uses the Bluetooth feature in the S-Type, so she unfortunately hears much more of the cabin noise around her. In her Lexus she uses an earpiece plugged into her phone since the Lexus does not have Bluetooth. So she claims that the recent A/C whistling in the S-Type is interfering with her phone calls. My answer? "Get off the f***ing phone and concentrate on driving the car! Most of your phone usage in the car is talking to your mother or your friends. If it's not a business call, it can wait until you get home!"

For some reason that suggestion did not go over very well with her. Glad I was wearing pants at the time because otherwise I think she would have taken the candles she was arranging on the dining room table and shoved them up my rear end....

 

Hi Jon,

You're lucky, my wife would not have let the pants stop her from jamming candles up my butt. They would have gone through the pants. I guess telling your wife to just turn down the fan would have gotten you a similar freeze the sun look.

 

You are correct. I knew better than to make matters worse by suggesting she simply turn down the fan speed....

Her philosophy is "this whistling noise wasn't there before, the car is still under warranty, so make Jaguar fix it...."

She took off this morning in the S-Type to visit her parents in Florida and won't be back until early next week, so I get a break from this for awhile. I'll gladly take it....

 

i had some thing like that be for make sure that the rear vents are open all the why. the open/close wheel in the back center vent's is open. check that frist on then go from their good luck.

 

That's the first thing I checked when she complained about the noise. The vents were fully open....

 

Hi Jon,

This is probably a long shot, but have you lowered and raised all the windows in the oft chance that they weren't sealed all the way? Also, have you inspected the trunk seals for any evidence of damage or indications of not sealing all the way? I'm looking at the obvious and cheapest things first.

Good luck,

Mike

 

Yes to both (good suggestions, though)....

Wife won't return home with the S-Type until early next week. I'm hoping that by her running the A/C at full blast over the course of this 1,500 mile trip, the whistling noise will either work itself out or she'll become a bit more tolerant of it. Either way, it's on my latest warranty punch list for the Jaguar techs to look into when I take the car in for its final free dealership oil & filter change by mid-July....