I am experiencing loud humming/buzzing/fluttering between 45-55mph from the roof rack, has anyone seen a thread talking about this (for defender 2020) or advice on how to get the dealer to resolve? This is without any load on the roof whatsoever.

 

Don't recall the thread, but if you use the Advanced Search, you may eventually find it. From my own experience and what I recall - you should try two things. 1) Check EVERY fastener. Most commonly something is loose. That was my issue. 2) you may be missing some of the rubber inserts in the rack. If you have the trophy edition, they likely added a lot of "stuff" to the rack and may have removed some and left it flapping up there.

Good luck.

 

Resonate buzzing can be several different things. All tend to be loose items. Rubber strips, loose plastic cladding or a mounted assembly that is resonating to its harmonic frequency. Going into the dealer and just saying it is making a noise up there really will not make it easy or even feasible to fix it. Same goes with doctors, they tend to need more detailed info to get to the bottom of problems. As a suggestion, most of our sophisticated phones and watches have ambient noise monitoring apps. Humans, using their not so sophisticated ears are really poor at locating noises. What we think is right front, may well be left rear, weird, but our triangulation system in our heads is not great anymore. We kinda de-evolved the skill. So get to speed, have a passenger get close to the roof inside and move a smartphone (or watch) running the app scan the roof area and find the loudest spot. Then, when stopped, take a peak and see if it is obvious on top. It may be stupidly simple. If you don't see anything obvious, then narrowing it down to a specific place will make the reception at service desk oh, so much better.

 

anything mounted to your roof is very sensitive to aerodynamics.

that means loose weather stripping, the mounting distance of the rack. i have found the further back the rack sits on the roof the quieter it is. even moving back the rack an inch makes a difference

 

The rack install instructions advise checking the torque on all the fastening bolts at set mileage following install.

I'd do that. Make sure everything is buttoned up to spec.

Check the rubber trims. If they have been cut short and don't tuck in nicely at the ends they can vibrate

Check each crossbar is also fully tightened.

I'd do all of these things myself over a cup of tea or two in the peace and quiet of my garage before wasting my time at the dealer who won't, I wager, go to the same lengths.

Do the same on the ladder. Make sure the two bolts on the side are torqued to spec.

The one port install item I have (front undershield) was not torqued to spec. It was actually not fully positioned. I redid the bolts all except for one that was cross threaded by the good folks at JLR. I don't have much faith in their quality control when it comes to these bolt on things.

 

Great feedback, overall sounds like I need to locate and resolve with personal effort vs. the dealer. I'll try that first. Thank you everyone!!

 

Same here, I hear the buzzing between 60-70mph, especially when there is a turbulence. It doesn't last long, probably less than 30s at most. But the buzzing noise is quite distinct and loud.

 

Did you end up getting it resolved. I think the noise come from the front right part of my roof rack

 

I disassembled all the roof rack crossbars. Each one is different in length, so I recommend marking them before assembly. It will facilitate reassembly. On each crossbar I disassembled the side caps, which I lightly lubricated with silicone sealant, placed the anti-vibration washers under the bolts of the cap, and sealed the screw thread with Loctite thread safety sealant. Then I mounted the crossbars back one by one, and sealed the bolts that hold them on the roof rack again with Loctite. Since then I have had peace and quiet with the rattle and vibration of the crossbars. Now the roof rack makes a normal aerodinamic noise.

 

Thank you so much for going over what you have done! Do you know what type of anti-vibration washers you used? I'm thinking doing the same.