The next generations of direct injection diesel engines have greatly improved their performances compared with petrol engines. However, one of the pending subjects is the noise and vibration levels, due to working cycle itself. The design effort to reduce the emissions of noise and vibration transmitted to the vehicle's driver could be lessened because of the assembly process variation. In this paper, a procedure to control this variation has been suggested in order to maintain noise and vibration performances within the limits of design.Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Calvo, J.A., Díaz, V. and San Román, J.L. (2005) 'Controlling combustion noise in direct injection diesel engine through mechanical vibration measurement', Int.