So I've had this clunking noise coming from my drivers side front suspension for several months now. It seemed to disappear for a while when I changed to my summer tires and put on a new fsb(whiteline). But it has since returned. It only clunked on that corner when i hit moderate bumps in the pavement at speeds below 30mph. Above that speed i couldn't hear it because of road noise or smoothing out the bumps by driving faster over them. I've made it go away for now by jacking up the car on that corner then lowering it. I also made use all the nuts on the top of the strut are tight. From what I've read on nasioc i'm describing a blown strut. Any input?
If its hollow and resonant soudning and sort of vibrates down from the initial impact for a half second or so then its a strut. Jacking it up and putting it back down wont do anything to stop the noise on a blown strut, you probably have a clearance problem somewhere. Look at your endlink and control arm area.
same thing happened to my friends 04 wrx. low speeds only....and it only happened if there was a passenger in the car!?!?! really strange...the subaru dealer in Duluth couldn't find anything wrong.....
It's kind of hard to describe the sound. Its just a clunk immediately after hitting a crack in the pavement - maybe, infact, while hitting the crack. Compression and rebound seem fine - it's not bouncy. I've looked all around the control arm area and found nothing. I had this problem even before i replaced the fsb with a whiteline fsb. Again, it disappeared after i had the car up on a jack (no weight on the wheel). Then returned some time later with no known event to trigger it. Hasn't come back since I jacked it up on sunday.
...thought..... Are you using lowering springs? I once had that problem with the mystery noise.....I moved the rubber sleeve that covers the spring so it was at the very bottom of the spring on the strut.... they were touching a bit and moving the rubber sleeve down took care of the problem. or the next time you have the car up on a jack I would make sure your spring, even if stock is seated properly on the strut and the top hat
yeah the seating of the spring so that it goes all the way back to the cutout tab on the strut might be it, as well as the little boot. I remember having a similar problem in back because of a torn spring boot as well.
I have Eibach pro-kit springs. I could check again for the rubber sleeve or proper seating, but I'm pretty sure they were fine last time I checked. I've had them on since last June and have only had problems recently. - that's what made me think blown strut. I did tighted the top strut bolt about 1/4 to 1/2 turn - that might have been it too.
my blown struts would sound better after jacking the car up. hollow thunking, slow speeds, starts and stops. over small cracks..... i vote strut.
My eibachs had the "eibach clunk." If you bring it down to firestone on fri evening i'll probably be there and i'll take a ride and tell you if it sounds like my old blown front strut or the "eibach clunk" if you'd like.
I agree with what Aaron said. He seems to have the idea. I'll maybe be in town when Matt gets around to installing my uppipe. Might be a while though. I don't make trips up to the cities from here (Rochester) too regularly.
