Continuation of thread "Clonks clunks and rattles"

Crossthreaded

Active Member
Apr 16, 2019
536
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I'm back with the second part of the thread I posted a few minutes ago and this is really more for those of us with less experience who may be wondering about some of the stuff I've been mentioning.

I mentioned the anti-roll bar bushes. Here is the O/S one on mine just after I sprayed some silicone lube on it during my diagnostic explorations:

P1100479.JPG


Which explains why it's looking a bit "wet". You can see my "obsession" with smearing threads with copaslip to facilitate later dismantling is alive and well.

It occurs to me also that less experienced folk may be wondering "what's a drop link"? well here's the one I'm referring to in this thread:

P1100477.JPG


It's the vertical black bar with a ball joint on either end. The ball joints look like this:

P1100478.JPG


There's one at either end of the link, one - in this case the upper - is fixed to the suspension strut and the other, lower one, is fixed to the anti roll bar.

Checking them is simply a matter of gripping it with your hand and vigorously wiggling it around. Any sloppy free play in it would be good reason to condemn it, but I must repeat, the anti-roll bar can exert a lot of force on it and will cancel out your ability to apply enough force with your hands to feel for loose play unless it's in a state of equilibrium. Once you've been shown how to do it it becomes an easy check to do, trying to do your first one on your own without someone who knows the procedure, can be difficult because you don't know what you're looking to feel. The other option, if you're unsure, is to undo just one of the fixing nuts which will relax the whole setup. Trouble is, living in a constant "shower" of road muck and salt, they are often corroded solid and you have to resort to cutting them off which means a new drop link - Ok if you're renewing anyway, but not a lot of help when diagnosing!

So there we are. Now I know what my clonk/clunk/rattle is due to and I'm happy to live with it for a while anyway, especially now I know it's not something dangerous. I hope this wee experience of mine might be of help to someone else with these noises which seem so difficult to find.
 
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