Hi all,

I'm a Fit owner, but, my girlfriend has a CRV and I am damn stumped. Hoping someone here may have some guesses.

We have a 2016 CRV with only 26,000 miles on it. It is driven around Los Angeles and generally well cared for. Recently, we've noticed a resonant knock or thud coming from the front right (passenger side, front) suspension and it's quite the mystery.

I've been working on my own cars for almost 20 years and I'm stumped. I'm throwing this out there in case anyone has had a similar problem and kows a fix.

• The sound is heard inside the car and comes from the front right of the vehicle. It sounds as if you were striking the coil spring with a rubber mallet.
• It has force behind it, but, nothing is felt in the steering wheel or the brake pedal.
• It is almost totally random in occurrence and seems to not respond / be triggered by road conditions. However, it regularly occurs when going down a steep hill (we live in a canyon) and turning left. When leaving our home, we wind down a couple of hundred feet and there is a sharp and steep left turn. The sounds occurs during the start of this turn 8 times out of 10.
• There is no effect on steering or suspension performance.
• We took the car to a local shop. They put it on the lift and found that some sway bar end link bolts were "finger tight". They tightened the bolts, test drove the car and didn't hear the noise. They didn't charge us. We heard the noise again on the ride home.
• Two days later, I find a screw in the tire and notice that the tire pressure is quite low (though, the TPS system did not trigger). Had the tire plugged and the sound ceased! For a day. Then it came back. But, much less frequently.
• I personally crawled under the car and everything looks normal. No cracked coil spring (my initial guess), no missing bolts or bent suspension parts, bushings look to be in good order, etc... Removed the strut mount cover and little could be ascertained, but, nothing looked drastically out of place.

I'm totally stumped. My new guess is that the shock portion of the strut is damaged. My girlfriend mentioned hitting a curb not too long ago, but, I've never known a curb to damage a strut. We have another appointment with a different mechanic next week.



Until then... any guesses?

 

Depending on how hard the curb was hit something could be out of alignment/spec.

Somethings that come to mind initially are strut mount,motor mount or tire/wheel. Try swapping wheels! Any of the bushing could have been effected by the impact.

 

Never thought of a wheel issue!

After the screw was removed and tire plugged and reinflated, the knocking reduced drastically. Good thought!