Suspension woes and terrible noises - totally lost
Hey everyone. I'm a pretty decent DIY-er and I'm totally stumped. For months now, I've been dealing with what looks like variable on-center toe. It feels the harder I push the car or the warmer the day is, the more likely this symptom appears. I took my car to get aligned a couple time by my shop of 10 years in about September after replacing CA, CAB, steering coupler and inner outer tie rods. Still recognizing these issues, I began taking my car to a performance shop. I took it once and it was more or less just as bad. I took it back, stating this variable on-center effect and they added a ton more toe in, which I feel is simply masking the issue.
Over the past couple months, a new clunking has been increasingly easier to hear. So last week, I put the car up and checked nearly everything. I pulled out the torque wrench on CA to knuckle, tie rod to knuckle, FCAB to chassis. I verified tightness on both rack mounts and the inner CA to subframe mounts. I also was going to loosen and tighten the strut clamp bolt, but they were insanely tight and they looked properly seated.
After that day, a clunk as been increasingly more common. To better isolate, I removed the sway bar in entirety, hoping it would go away because the end links looked a little shot. While that didn't happen, the noise is way more subdued and seems to be more prominent when FL goes over road oscillations.
Seeing this, I went to investigate, but I'm admittedly running out of new parts. So it's easy to now look at the strut/shock assembly (AST 5100 + Turner street camber/caster plates). I remove the strut bar and notice the top bolts can move freely with the car on the ground. I'll admit a little ignorance - I don't fully understand how this camber caster plate works, but I'll tell you this: it seems I can move the top mounting plate completely freely on the passenger side, but can't on the driver side. You can see this movement in this video: https://youtu.be/GFySq1A7ppw.
The driving noises is 0-20 seconds, and you can see the movement from the top and bottom at 20-45 seconds, and the mild squeak I can create by grabbing the wheel to put a y-axis load on the wheel. In the video at 45 seconds, you can see that there's this odd amount of play you can get with very little physical effort. I'm also a man with a problem in the hunt of a problem, so I can't tell if this is confirmation bias. But when I look at this NAM3 link about the camber caster plates, I still can't discern how it mounts to the strut and understand there should be some movement allowed, but I don't think this much with weight on the corner should be permitted
I'm a bit of a loss. I can't just keep throwing this thing at shops who just want to toe this thing in. Looking for suggestions on what to investigate, or confirmation that a camber/caster plate shouldn't be able to move like that. Like perhaps the bearing is blown, I don't know
. But if the top can move, that would definitely explain my variable toe. Or if the bearing inside is blown, could explain my noise. Just running out of things to investigate, and the noise is very weird and doesn't sound metal on metal.
It's very hard to capture irregular toe characteristics, but the car will tend to pull to the left under braking and pull to the right under cruise and acceleration. You can see the car basically want to steer into a ditch under normal braking, and then in the next clip, you can kind of see the turning right countersteer under braking.
Over the past couple months, a new clunking has been increasingly easier to hear. So last week, I put the car up and checked nearly everything. I pulled out the torque wrench on CA to knuckle, tie rod to knuckle, FCAB to chassis. I verified tightness on both rack mounts and the inner CA to subframe mounts. I also was going to loosen and tighten the strut clamp bolt, but they were insanely tight and they looked properly seated.
After that day, a clunk as been increasingly more common. To better isolate, I removed the sway bar in entirety, hoping it would go away because the end links looked a little shot. While that didn't happen, the noise is way more subdued and seems to be more prominent when FL goes over road oscillations.
Seeing this, I went to investigate, but I'm admittedly running out of new parts. So it's easy to now look at the strut/shock assembly (AST 5100 + Turner street camber/caster plates). I remove the strut bar and notice the top bolts can move freely with the car on the ground. I'll admit a little ignorance - I don't fully understand how this camber caster plate works, but I'll tell you this: it seems I can move the top mounting plate completely freely on the passenger side, but can't on the driver side. You can see this movement in this video: https://youtu.be/GFySq1A7ppw.
The driving noises is 0-20 seconds, and you can see the movement from the top and bottom at 20-45 seconds, and the mild squeak I can create by grabbing the wheel to put a y-axis load on the wheel. In the video at 45 seconds, you can see that there's this odd amount of play you can get with very little physical effort. I'm also a man with a problem in the hunt of a problem, so I can't tell if this is confirmation bias. But when I look at this NAM3 link about the camber caster plates, I still can't discern how it mounts to the strut and understand there should be some movement allowed, but I don't think this much with weight on the corner should be permitted
I'm a bit of a loss. I can't just keep throwing this thing at shops who just want to toe this thing in. Looking for suggestions on what to investigate, or confirmation that a camber/caster plate shouldn't be able to move like that. Like perhaps the bearing is blown, I don't know
. But if the top can move, that would definitely explain my variable toe. Or if the bearing inside is blown, could explain my noise. Just running out of things to investigate, and the noise is very weird and doesn't sound metal on metal.It's very hard to capture irregular toe characteristics, but the car will tend to pull to the left under braking and pull to the right under cruise and acceleration. You can see the car basically want to steer into a ditch under normal braking, and then in the next clip, you can kind of see the turning right countersteer under braking.
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