Thread: Strange noise in the front end???

i had the same problem. whenever i turned my wheel to one side i would hear a pop noise like something banged up against eachother so i got new struts and its gone now. it could be that for you also. take them off and see how everything looks. make sure that your strut is completely intact and everything looks fine but theres a really good chance that it is the strut.

yeah your struts were prolly leaking

i had the popping noise and it turned out my front struts were bad. if u do the wheel bearing test and u know ur sway bar links are good, then i would def check the struts.

Sounds like bad axels to me. They are pretty easy to change. Id try that first.

SO...............................(trying my hardest to not bust out a few paragraphs of profanitys and get banned from yet another car forum here!!)

Picked up a set of good used axles that are known to be good, swapped out the drivers side as this F%$@&^@%* noise is deff coming from the drivers side of the car.

Noise is still there!

Plan for this weekend is to jack the car up and put it on stands for the 4245249578 time in 3 weeks and quadruple check all bolts and nuts to ensure tightness (again!) and to pull the drivers side coilover (tein ss) and dis assemble it and check the strut bearing to see if its trashed.

Anyone else have any ideas? I'm seriously getting stumped here and I know that once I figure it out I'm going to bounce my head off the garage floor a few times for being so stupid I didnt think of that first......

Any and all advice will be greatly appreciated!

*Update*

Ok, finally got a chance to work on the car for a few and think I've figured out what this noise is.

About this time last year I bought a set of replacement control arms from autopartswharehouse.com I had a feeling these would not be of the highest quality........
Turns out I was right, the big bushing that rides in the mount towards the back of the car turns out to be......... a metal ribbed skeleton with a rubber coating on the outside of it, the rubber had somehow gotten torn or rubbed away??

Greased the hell out of that spot, re-assembled, drove, no noise!
So now, I"m going to rebuild my OG control arms with new ball joints and either stock bushings or the ES set. Ive seen some Whiteline bushings for that location but have not seen any feedback on them.

Opinions?? on the ES set too if you have them??

And also.............................

I screwed around with them for just a bit then threw them down in frustration as I had other work going on but................

How do you get the stock "big" bushing off of the control arm?

I like my ES bushings. I do believe the Whiteline bushings are of equal or better quality, and they also add a little bit of caster if I remember correctly which is a good thing.

To get the stock bushing off, it should just slide off. You might have to press it off somehow though. In a pinch you can always melt it / torch it off and then clean up the residue.

Oh man, Ive burnt alot of bushings out and hoped I'd never have to do it again!!


Worst smell ever!

Thx man, I had full ES control arm sets on a few cars now with good results, just mostly wondering about the whitelines and there advertised "increases forward caster".

Yep, the Whiteline caster bushings are a pretty good idea on just about any B13/B14. Not exactly sure why I don't have them on mine. =/