Like the title says, Ive installed loweri g springs. Tein S Techs to be exact. well now there is a clunking/sprung sound coming from the left from strut/spring. Ive searched the forums, ive reinstalled the strut and spring. Everything was on correctly. So what gives? There is nothing loose! It sucks because my car has 26k miles on it and it now sounds like a PoS. Any ideas? I mean i love the looks But damn.

 

i have swifts on mine, in the beginning it was clunking, but it went away. did you install the rubber sleeves? i believe it helps the springs from bottoming out.

 

when you installed the springs did you make certain the spring was seated against the stops at the ends of the springs?
worse if you lowered enough, like 2 inches, the piston will then bounce on the bottom of the shock, also producing the clunk and will eventually destroy your shock.
those stops on the shock prevents that and you need to install them if you didn't.
a short term solution is putting rubber ciol separators on coils.
and you might be collapsing tghed spring coils to a solid cylinder which also clunks but the piston should bottom first.

 

xxryu139xx : yes I did. if you're referring to the bottom sleeves on the springs than yes.

mahout : yes, the springs were reseated correctly, i made sure of it. I also left half the bump stop. its not bottoming out, i know what that sounds and feels like

honestly i think the spring is bumping itself. causing the clunk/sprung sound.
what are these coil separators you speak of? BTW the springs came with their own spring sleeves in the mid section of the spring, like the left pair in this photo.

Redirect Notice

thanks for the help BTW.

 

I can't see the photos but if its a sleve formed by a piece of tubing that fits over the coil in the mid part of the coil that is generally the purpose of keeping a spring from collapsing into too short a spring. unfortunately it also causes the spring to bind, or be a solid stack with no compression left.
ifg you've watched a nascar race you may have noted the crews often insert spring rubbers into thed coil when the wheel is off the ground. it stiffens the spring and thus induces understeer on that wheel, which the crew chief and driver needs to improve handling.
my guess is you may have a situation where the sleeve you speak of is actually being hammered by the ajacent spring coil as it compresses.
how much clearance do you have between the outside diameter and the next spring? and is it different compared to the other side , both measured with a driver on board. does the clunking come from the driver side?
and again, how much drop did you get with these springs?
how about coating the sleeve with shoe polish and see if the next sring coil leaves a mark of contact.
and when you seated the spring you made sure it twisted the butt end against the heel stop in the lower perch after you got thru. often thats a hard force reqwuired to do that once the spring capped .
we've grerased the upper perch to make it easier on occasion.
good luck.

 

I rencently had a clunking noise that I couldn't figure out on my 08. It turned out to be the end link for the sway bar. The end link nut loosened and was moving around on the strut mount. I tightened it up and haven't had a problem since.

 

I had the same issue when i installed my swifts, clunking noises when I hit any size bumps or even slight irregularities on the pavement. Turned out to be that I did not tighten the top nut on the strut enough so I used a impact wrench and it did the trick.

http://estore.honda.com/honda/images.../TK64B2800.png

#20 is the nut I had to tighten down more.

 

@FittinglyFittedFit

So you just use a impact wrench and go to town? I imagine you dont use the hex key since your using a impact wrench.I remember bending the hell out of the hex key trying to tighten By hand.

Btw, I really appreciate the help guys.

 

Exactly, however I was pretty much in the same boat as you at first, low mileage car (36k), everything seemed tight and secured, and broken hex key. I could not figure out what was causing the sound, I even replaced the bearings right below that nut thinking maybe that was causing the issues. Until I was about to give up, I emailed swift, and asked them for advice and they told me to use an impact gun on that nut, and voila!
I hope this will help you as I know how annoying noises like this can be!
Good luck!

 

yoo im in the exact situation man. i know this thread is a year old, but this is getting pretty frustrating. I'm hearing a soft knocking noise from the front right suspension when i go over speed bumps or when the road pavement is irregular. i took apart the suspension and reassembled everything correctly many times and won't go away.. I'm not sure if its that damper mounting bolt (#20), or if its the shock tower bolt.. i even impacted that #20 bolt down and tightened the shock tower bolt really hard using a hex nut! please help a brother out!

 

Hey man, I feel your frustration! What I did was go back and start from the beginning, make sure the left and right springs are on the correct sides and sitting in the correct position, make sure everything is put back correctly, and lastly I used the tips provided to me by the customer service rep from Swift to use the impact wrench on that #20 nut. Make sure you have something to hold the whole strut assembly in place firmly before impacting it down, and once I got it down all the way, I let the impact wrench hammer it down for a second or 2 just to be sure. It will spin it, but with the impacts, I believe it did get tighter. Also, before I did this, I replaced the #12 item which look like had ball bearings inside, mine looked like it was leaking and there was grease coming out of it, so at first I thought maybe that was causing the issue, so I ordered a new one, but I honestly don't think this was causing the issue.

Also, after changing out the shocks with new konis, I used the same procedure and have not had this issue or any other issues reoccur.

Electric Impact Wrench - 1/2"
This is the impact wrench I used.

https://www.fitfreak.net/forums/2nd-...r-ge8-fit.html
This is the guide I followed.

Good luck, I hope it works out for you, if all else fails, I would email Swift and ask for suggestions, maybe they have some new method that weren't available to them when I asked, never know.

Let us know how it goes!

 

Hmm I have tried those steps and still did not work.. I even made sure to make it exactly as the driver side cause that side is not causing issues at all. After I impacted it down the #20 bolt down, I even used an Allen wrench to make sure it is on tight.. I will keep trying and thanks for your help. One thing I noticed was when trying to diagnose the issue was that when I would gently push on the front of the car so that it would start bouncing up and down, I can hear the knocking noise coming straight from the shock tower in the engine bay. When I would touch the shock tower as I'm rocking the car, I can feel it moving a little.... weird thing is, even when I remove the shock tower bolt #18, #19, and 14, I can still feel it moving up and down when rocking the car. But when on the driver side, there is no movement at all even with #18, 19, and 14 off......which is interesting so based on that, I'm guessing it has to be bolt #20 right?! But there's like no way that bolt is going to get any tighter.... so I even tried different ways of tightening all of the upper and lower strut mount bolts and even tightnened the bolts with putting load on the suspension... then I came to the conclusion that maybe the whole Shock assembly isn't going in all the way or sitting "flush" when I'm putting it through from the under side to the top... but I don't even know if that's possible but I'm just coming to that conclusion now cause I feel like im out of options LOL. I tried tightening it so hard with an Allen key and a socket wrench that now that hole in the strut is stripped..... so now I'm in need of a new shock unit haha. I wonder what I'm doing wrong LOL.. so frustrating man

 

Thinking of just hitting up a local Honda or a trusted shop near by and SEE what they do cause I'm curious to see exactly what I'm doing wrong.... I feel like I'm so close loool

 

Damn that sucks! But I remember once I used the impact wrench on that #20, the allen key wasn't needed anymore.

Are you using a deep socket on the impact wrench? Make sure the socket can reach all the way down. I can't think of anything else, but it does sound like the same exact issue I was dealing with....smh, good times

 

Yup a deep socket and a pretty powerful impact gun. Sigh we'll see.. Ima hit up the dealer or this shop that's near by and hear their thoughts about it. Once resolved, hopefully it'll be a good learning experience

 

And please let us know once you get to the bottom of this so next time this happens to someone, we have a definitive answer!

 

Instead of buying one shock unit since the threading was stripped, I purchased a pair of Koni orange for the front. They were the same price so might as well. Installed them and bam there's no play or noise lol..... As for the shocks themselves, Im lovin em. Handle bumps a lot smoother than the factory shocks for sure, but we'll see about performance..

 

Nice, I have been riding on the same orange konis for over a year now and I love them!

 

On Orange Koni's coming up a year on S. Techs. Love it. Ride is firm but not back breaking.

 

Truuuuuuu👍