RickNY

Figured I would throw this out there in case anyone else ran into this.. I had a persistent rattle coming from the drivers side in the area near the storage compartment to the left of the steering wheel (or so I thought). Originally I thought it was something I had in the compartment, but after emptying it out and the rattle not going away, I had time today to track down the cause. My 2021 has done this from day 1.. In my specific case, I tracked down the rattle to the driver side footwell cover.. This is the flat piece of plastic in the drivers footwell that houses the OBD port. This cover has a plastic leg just to the left of the steering column that is supposed to be inserted into a socket in the back... On my car -- it wasn't, and was just flopping around. Unfortunately, you cant just move the leg into the socket without first loosening or removing the instrument panel cover (the piece that houses the storage compartment). I did not have to completely remove it - I was able to loosen it enough and pull it away to guide the leg into the socket where it belonged.

Here are the instructions in case anyone else runs into this:

1) With a plastic pry tool, pry off the instrument panel side cover. There is a small slot near the bottom where you can insert the pry tool to get started. Nothing dramatic here, it should pry off easily.


2) Once the side cover is off, you will see one 8mm bolt at the top -- remove it
3) Open the storage compartment -- there are two additional 8mm bolts at the top on each side -- remove both
4) On the bottom of the instrument panel cover where it meets with the footwell cover, there are two more 8mm bolts on the left and the right.
5) In total, 5 bolts need to come out -- they are indicated in the service manual by the 'A' and 'B' in this picture:


6) What you need to do here is pull the instrument panel cover out here enough to free the mounting tab(s) for the footwell cover -- it shares the same mounting point as the bottom 'A' bolts in the picture above. This panel is in pretty tight but I found that firmly gripping it just under the steering column and giving it a pull allowed the right side of it to break free, and in the process freeing the right tab for the footwell cover.
7) I was then able to pull enough up on the footwell cover to guide the leg into the socket.
8) Here is a closeup of where that leg belongs.. As you can see, the area is all scratched up because it had been bouncing around since I got the car. No worries -- you cant see this unless you crawl under there and look.


9) Re-assembly is the reverse
10) Enjoy nice quiet ride

I dont think many other people would run into this, but just in case you have a mystery rattle that sounds like its coming from that storage compartment -- heres a place to look.. The panels are designed in such a way that this leg couldn't have just popped out on its own.. This was an assembly error.. Must have been a Friday when they worked on it.

Daaavid

My car built in November 2018 (MY2019) had the same issue, but on the right side.

I took it to the dealer and they managed to force it in and fix it in 5 minutes without dismantling anything according to the technician. Mine was all scratched up as well and the symptom to a lot of my rattle concerns. Dealer did not believe me that I did that since I had my radar detector hardwired via the fuse box in the dead pedal, but I told them that there was no way I touched that panel because I could show them where I ran the cables exactly.

Cole trickle

I had a rattle in my B9 S4 similar to the one described in the OP.

I got stuck on step 6, poked my head in the footwell trying to figure it out and found the root cause was something different.

There’s a plastic bracket in the driver’s side footwell that supports a ventilation duct above the brake pedal. The bracket is supported by a length of plastic that wedges into a molded plastic recession / nook toward the front of the footwell.

In my car the length of plastic was dislodged from the nook and the end of the plastic piece was bouncing against the plastic molding over uneven road surfaces, causing the rattle. I was able to wedge the plastic length back into the nook and no more rattle.

Cole trickle

Replying because apparently I can't edit my own post.

Looking at the pictures again, I had the same issue as OP. Like Daaavid says, it may be possible to brute force the plastic length back into place without removing trim pieces or screws. I was on step 6 when I located the cause of the rattle and got it back into place without much effort.

It seems like this piece could easily be knocked out of place by an accidental kick from the driver.