Thought this might be worth posting as I'm sure I am not the only one...

After 3 half days disassembling most of the dash in our Fabia in an attempt to track down an extremely annoying rattling/creaking/groaning noise from behind the dash when driving over bumps or moving the steering wheel I have finally cured it.

The car was involved in a shunt earlier in the year when a renault espace pulled out of a junction in front of my partner and left her with no where to go but straight in the side of it. The impact was not at high enough speed to cause the airbags to deploy but did enough damage to make me doubt whether the insurance company would write the car off or not(its on an 07 but only done 22k). It took them 5 weeks but they did repair it, we had had it back a couple of weeks when I started to notice noises coming from somewhere in the dash area. I don't drive it more than twice a week but it seemed to be getting considerably worse every time I drove it.

It turns out that the steel cross-member that supports the dash and steering column which goes from one "A"post to the other and has a structure in the middle behind the radio was the source of the problem. Both ends have access panels in the end of the dash and slackening the bolts at the right hand end made the noise disappear somewhat but the actual source of the noise was the bracket assembly behind the radio where it bolts to the floor/central tunnel area. The end of the centre console is flexible enough to allow it to be pulled up and out of the way in the drivers side foot well enough to expose the lower end of the bracket and a bolt with a 13mm head. This bolt was so loose that it fell out when I touched it and obviously allowing the whole cross bar assembly to move and rattle.

Don't know if it was the prang that jarred it loose or just pure coincidence but we now have peace and quiet again. It no longer rattles like a 1980's kit car...

So no rattles from the radio, just a lot of rock'n'roll!

tricky, that's a really good post. Thanks for the information.