Rear suspension creaking

[fat fuchs]

13 hours ago, Ian Comerford said:

I think it should be ok to align them pretty accurately, such that I don’t notice it is different.  The digital gauge will ensure I pick up on the same spline on the torsion bars and I would aim to scribe a line where the plates overlap.  A scribed line is quite a bit less than 1mm thick, so should ensure sufficient accuracy.  I guess that I can do the donkey work and get CG to align if I felt it needs it, but I’m not convinced I’m a good enough driver to notice 

I'm all for saving time/money where possible on repairs but, if you're separating the spring plate from the trailing arm to do the inner bushes too, re-alignment would be a good idea. I've just changed spring plates on two cars noting all angles and wheel camber etc. but still couldn't replicate the original settings. Although you may not notice a difference you may start to notice uneven tyre wear. As you say, no harm in trying and then doing alignment later if required.

Cheers

FF

[Ian Comerford]

I think I may have been a bit hasty in hoping the issue had gone away.  After filling the car with baggage and the long haired bank manager and driving 750 miles across France the noise is reduced but still there.  A job for winter I guess..

[Leicestershire]

21 hours ago, Ian Comerford said:

I think I may have been a bit hasty in hoping the issue had gone away.  After filling the car with baggage and the long haired bank manager and driving 750 miles across France the noise is reduced but still there.  A job for winter I guess..

Lubricating with motorcycle chain wax will last a little longer but as per previous post the replacement PU bushes don't work in the same way as the original factory fitted rubber bushes and squeaking / groaning common. 

Enjoy your trip. 

[Ian Comerford]

Thank you.  Certainly enjoying the trip and the creaking isn’t affecting it, it’s only really evident in lower speed bumps and off camber areas.  Yesterdays drive down to Rocamadour was just fantastic, endless kms of winding river valley roads with little traffic, felt like turning it around and repeating but wary of causing the long haired bank manager to frown……

[Ian Comerford]

Well, after a bit of encouragement from Lewis, who reckoned you can get it pretty close with tools at home, and Felix who suggested how to capture bolt positions, I changed the spring plate bushes last week.  The wisdom suggests that you mark the current bolt positions against the spring plate or swinging arm with the aim of returning to the same positions.  It’s easy to do this on the spring plates by scribing round the washers.  But it’s less easy where the eccentric bolts go through the swinging arm (picture below) as one is recessed and access to the other one isn’t great without a pit.  
Felix suggested using an Allen key in the socket heads and a Wixy digital angle gauge I bought about 12 years ago to do a full suspension overhaul.  The socket head is 12mm and Allen ketch’s are not readily available to that size so I used a socket with an Allen head and welded a bolt onto the side of it (picture below).  The bolt was simply somewhere to sit the magnetic gauge and take a reading.

After marking the positions of as many washers as I could and also scribing a line where the end of the spring plate sits adjacent to the swinging arm, I used the tool/gauge to capture and record the positions of each eccentric bolt.  Once you have this info it’s not too hard to get quite close to where you were before when you come to rebuild, 0.5 degrees out was the worst result so at least the wheels are pointing broadly in the same direction as they were.  Removing the spring plates was easy as I had heavily greased the TBs 12 years ago and you don’t need to split the spring plates to do this job.  And as Haynes Manuals say, reassembly was the reverse of stripping……..well nearly.  It’s quite a faff getting everything back into the same place but the bolt welded to the socket as also useful in helping turn the bolt to the correct position and then to hold it in place whilst we torqued it up.  All in all not bad and I’ve got a visit to CG booked for early October.  In the meantime there’s the small matter of a French road trip and a couple of thousand miles with non-creaking and reasonably straight rear suspension.  Happy!

[Northy]

Well done Ian 🙌

[Ian Comerford]

7 hours ago, Northy said:

Well done Ian 🙌

Your inspiration, my perspiration

[strosek34]

Good work that man.  ,