mad.cool

Hey folks,

I'm hoping to get some info about other's experience on coil over installs to help me on this problem I'm having after installing a new set of Tein Flex Z coil overs. For the first few days it was perfect. No noises whatsoever, ride quality was excellent.

A little over a week later I started noticing a clunking sound from the front suspension. It occurs at low speed as well as typical city speeds, haven't taken it on the highway thus far. I've been a bit hesitant to drive the car at all for fear of damaging anything. I can usually feel the clunk through the throttle pedal as well, but its hard for me to tell if its coming from the driver or passenger side.

When I had installed the front coil overs I left the preload and ride height as they were and made measurements against the reference values in the accompanying owners guide. I only messed with the rear's height adjustment and it was actually to raise it about 8 mm from the reference value. I only adjusted the top spring mount and not the strut.

Today I took the front driver side wheel off to inspect and try to find the source of noise. I remeasured the distances of various points on the coil over and compared them against the reference values once again, and everything seemed to be about right. To test the if the preload was good I tried moving the spring and noticed that I was able to move the spring's contact with the top mount and get it to make a noise. The reference value for the distance between the spring seat and the bottom lock ring is 99 mm and I was measuring about 101 mm, going by these numbers would mean the measured preload was already higher by 2 mm. Given that I was able to move the spring by hand I figured I'd try increasing the preload until I couldn't. So I did, and it ended up being just about 3 mm or 1/8" of additional preload. I put the wheel back on and went for a drive to see if this would fix it.

Alas, the noise was still there.

I popped the hood and sanity checked that each of the tower nuts were torqued to about 30 ft-lbs to be sure that wasn't the issue. I haven't gone back through all of the nuts/bolts involved in the install but I had used all of the recommended torque values when installing so I have less confidence that this is the problem. That being said, I'm planning to go over said nuts/bots tomorrow to confirm they're torqued as well as check out the passenger side preload.

I'd be interested to hear of any similar experiences of others. I've read about the top damper nut needing to be torqued down, has anyone had to do this?

projectpanda13

iTrader: (2)

the endlinks in good condition? The bolt for that tight?

dkmura

Any type of suspension work like this means a professional four-wheel alignment is in order.