gasongasoff

Thanks for taking a look. The chassis is lowered about 10mm below stock PASM, so it should be within range.

gasongasoff

I want to thank all of you for weighing in. According to the advice here, I should be looking at:
1) torque of top nut (which could be binding the strut bearing)
2) presence of conical washer and piston rod spacer
3) orientation of the conical washer and piston rod spacer

Anything else to look at or test? Going to take the car back to the installer on Tues. I just saw that thread in the Turbo forum where someone's B16's snapped in half (gulp).

Here's the sound:

And I also just noticed a clunking noise coming from the front passenger area:

idlook2

Just watched the videos, it definitely sounds like something is not right with the installation. The torque values that I posted earlier are directly from the service manual and the 59 ft lbs is referring to the large top nut. Here is a picture looking from the bottom of my coilover, you can see piston rod spacer and conical washer. Hope this helps!

CT944

Usually a new suspension will highlight other worn steering parts. I had the same experience. Culprit was bad tie rod ends. Try taking some WD40 and spraying a part at a time to narrow down the noise.

mikemessi

Did you take back to installer today? Any updates?

gasongasoff

Update: The noise has been fixed!

I took the car back to my installer yesterday. They're a bunch of great guys that care about their work. The team took down the front coilovers, and confirmed that the top nuts had not been over-torqued. It turns out, the Bilstein manual specifies 54 ft-lbs for the M14 piston rod.



They then inspected the individual parts, including the piston rod washer and conical washer, and I personally confirmed with them that they were in the correct sequence and oriented according to the manual.

So where was the noise coming from? The most likely place was from the stock bearings, which had 60k on them. So they proceeded to clean and re-grease the bearings. They also applied grease to the plastic blue washer. And reassembled. Voila, creaking noise was gone! My car no longer sounded like I was walking on a the deck of an old pirate ship. And for some reason, the clunking noise disappeared too.

I have no idea why the upper mount bearings decided to become noise after putting the coilovers, when I had no problem with them with the stock suspension, but I don't care. I'm just glad it turned out not to be an install issue, and I don't have to go back to stock. So, I guess we can add "dirty" upper mount bearings to the list of things that can make noise when turning the steering wheel at low speed. Or maybe this is a sign that I should just get camber plates and be done with it.

THANK YOU to everyone who took the time to look at the photos, post diagrams and photos, and lend a hand, I really appreciate it. I hope this thread can help someone too in the future.

motopix

Glad you're guys got it worked out.

I have a slightly used set of GT3 upper plates. PM me if interested.

Tgvr6

gasongasoff

For those of you who installed thrust/needle bearings, can you tell me where in the suspension "stack" you installed them?

997turbonewbie

did you get that sorted in the end? I heard some clonky noise whenever I go over bumps and found the same movement

Tgvr6

Yes , it was some dust stuck in the coilover. I send it back to bilstein, they did some maintenance and it’s over now.
for your issue , it seems to be a lower control arm if you get this noise on small bump at lower speed