let's guess the problem
 

-tein s-tech's self installed 5 months ago, nothing else...
-no balancing or alignment ever

problem:
When I turn the wheel to the left there seems to be creaking, and now recently, a clunking sound only on the passenger side. This problem only started up ~2 months ago, started as slightly annoying, got progressively worse.

Doesn't happen when I turn to the right.

Only happens at speeds from 1-25mph

going home now to take off that wheel and see if anything's loose or wrong.

:nails:

How do you drive being lowered? Do u drive slow on messed up roads and try to avoid potholes stuff like that. You could have possibly hit something and damaged your CV Joint

crap, didn't think that big...

southern california roads
+
semi fast driving
+
disregard for suspension
=
damn it

could be, who knows, i'll find out soon...

Check the seating on the springs. did you put the new springs in the stock seating... like where the spring ended did you match it up with the new one when installing. Make sure all your bolts are tight.

Most of the time a CV joint will make more of a repetitive clicking type of noise while turning if they are going bad... but that does not rule it out completely since I have heard them make some strange noises :P I would start though by making sure your springs, tie rods, sway bar etc are all tight and in proper shape first.

how convienent....I'm having the same problem except with coilovers.....

If you lower your car even 1" you need to adjust the front and rear toe in;)

Nothing to do with your issue but just pointing in out.

Rick

Hey Rick, just thought I'd ask because I randomly think of these things that I probably won't do just because of the possible cost and headache:

If I drove all the way up to Oregon to meet up with you, would you tweak my suspension for free O_O?

Sure, toe in, camber, are easy, not even hard to add a bit more postive castor, would do all that for free.

If you want the roll center corrected, ouch, BIG job, could take a few days, parts that are not yet verified to fit, modifying control arm pick up points, etc. Not too sure that would be a freebee;)

To get everything really dialed in I need around $3k worth of gear but at least I have found a local stock car racer that is hooking me up with a fellow racer that ownes a great set of scales. We need those to get the center of gravity figured out and then corner weight balanced.

I figure around spring I should have our car setup tweaked to near perfection then will have to run some events and fine tune it for autox, drags, road courses, street(pretty much going to be road course settings for the street but may run stiffer springs on the track). Once we get it phycially modified then going to put it on a good alignment rack, set up all the ballpark numbers for each situation above, punch mark and log it in a track book I will creat. Then we can go to the events, jack it up, make the changes, make a run, fine tune it, when done for the day set it back to what we need for the trip home or next event and off we go:)

Sound like fun???:):):) If you want to have a chance to beat the big dogs you have to pull out all the stops, we are facing incredible odds, love it!!!!

Rick



Rick

heh, lol.

I wasn't talking about super serious crazy style tweaking :P

I was just talking about adjusting ride heighth, spring rates, and a good, proper alignment.

I think something is screwed with my right side....I have the same ticking sound :\

Also, I noticed the brakes squeek ONLY in the morning when I make my first initial turn to get away from the curb...otherwise they're fine. Also, the car seems to stay straight most times, but sometimes it seems like it pulls right.

I went to the shop that installed them today but they were closed for whatever reason >:(

Anyway, I think I might take you up on the offer :)

This is an issue similar to what cropped up on my Protege5 after we dropped it on S-techs. not sure if this is what you are running into, but it might be something to take a look at.

http://www.msprotege.com/forum/showt...t=spring+clunk

in a nutshell, the issue was that the threading at the top of the struts does not go down far enough to allow the nut to sit tightly with the bowl-shaped washer allowing there to be about 1/8th of an inch of play.

http://www.msprotege.com/forum/attac...achmentid=4968

The quick fix was to add a couple of washers at the top of the strut between the nut and the washer.

http://www.msprotege.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=4970[/img]

-all bolts tight
-the spring on that side sits correctly.

So I took the wheel off, the few bolts I had to remove when installing the spring were tightened, the spring was sitting correctly, everything looked fine.

With the wheel off, I get in the car and turn the wheel as usual, and no sound.

I put the wheel back on, put the car back down, turn the wheel, and the sounds come back again.

Though after a couple days of driving the seriousness of it has gone down, but it's still there slightly. Just the creaking at very slow speeds.


:tap:

creaking? or poping... creaking can be the shock I guess but shouldnt just do it at low speeds

kind of like a wooden door opening but louder.

i think i had this problem with my toyota pickup.

if it happens when you have your steering wheel all the way turned then its the same.

a mechanic told me that there is this plastic cap that wears off and then metal hits on metal creating the creaking sound when fully turned.

it happens on toyotas and nissans.
usually when turning full tilt and sometimes going down a driveway hill.

Check your strut mounts and bearings, on top of the spring and rubber insulator. It's not the type of bearing you generally think about. Its more of a teflon ring that rides on a plastic mount. They go bad all the time on all kinds of cars. Also check to see if the rubber mounts are worn through. All kinds of stuff can cause that type of noise.