mrtask
Well-Known Member
After recently replacing the steering idler and both side steering arms my car was still making a nasty metallic 'clunk' somewhere in the front suspension. Couldn't find any play in the other ball joints, so I took off the passenger side front shock. With the lower end clamped in a vice and the thing extended to it's maximum length I was able to reproduce the sound, albeit only once, so I've re-fitted it to the car, and I'm happy to report the 'clunking' is no longer present (for now at least!). Pondering on this strange phenomenon and it's seeming to have ceased, I wonder if lifting the car on a two-poster lift is maybe not such a good thing? With the front suspension thus dangling, the shock then reaches a length it never would on the road under the weight of the car, and I'm wondering if something in the gas-filled shock's mysterious innards took unkindly to being 'stretched out'...? Or could it just have been that the locknuts holding the heavy duty shocks on to the beefed up lower mounting point had come loose, and the lower eyelet was where the noise was actually coming from...? I was able to tighten the drivers side locknut a couple of turns, suggesting it had maybe loosened. I've used loctite to help keep it tight now.
Slowed the rate of damping in the front shocks a few more turns now that the steering isn't sloppy anymore, and it is a pleasure in the corners again!
Slowed the rate of damping in the front shocks a few more turns now that the steering isn't sloppy anymore, and it is a pleasure in the corners again!