TSP

Happy New Years fellow RLer's. My wife's summer car is a 1997 2.5L 986. It"s bone stock and has almost 100,000 miles and at the end of last summer had developed a rather pronounced squeak at the driver's side rear. It squeaks when going over speed bumps, any bump really and is particularly noxious at low speed cause you can really hear it. If you put your hand on the fender and push down hard, it squeaks sitting still. I jacked it up with that wheel free and can't duplicate it with the wheel unsprung. It drives straight and tight. I figured this would be a good winter project, but the search function here has left me cold. Shocks? Trailing arms? Bushings? She drives it quite a bit when weather allows and I'd like to have this ready when the snow goes away. I'm handy enough with a wrench, have kept 356's alive for many years and my 997 goes to the dealership when needed as it is just too complicated to fathom, but I think if I can get the cause correct, I can do this one myself, minus the alignment that will probably be necessary after I'm done of course. Any thoughts from the experts.
Tim

Anker

Shocks!

Stephen Tinker

TSP - squeaking (front or rear suspension) can be several things, but starting with the cheapest repair, I have done he following:
1) Remove the rear sway bar and grease the rubber bushes (2 off) with lithium grease. Simple 2 hour job max.
2) My experience with squeaking suspension has centred around the bushes on the coffin arms, drop links and trailing arms. You have to replace the whole arms if the bushes are worn and rattling over corrugations, but if they are just squeaking adding lubricant helps. You will hear of people slitting the rubber boots and spraying WD40 into the bush but a more permanent solution that I have used successfully is to inject lithium grease (from an aerosol can) into the bush with a large medical syringe - available from a chemist (drug store) here in Australia. The syringe only makes a tiny hole in the rubber boot & I've never had a problem with moisture or dust entering the boot.
If the rears are squeaking, probably lube the front bushes too while the car is up on jackstands.....

TSP

Stephen,
Thanks. I'm a surgeon. Finding a big syringe and squirting in some lithium grease is easy and cheap... Will give it a try. Is there a magic number for miles where I should just replace them? The noise is the only issue, feels tight.

Stephen Tinker

Tim,
You will know when the bush(es) are worn by the noise they make over corrugations.

I replaced my front drop links/coffin arms/trailing arms @ +/- 80,000km (50,000 miles) because of one trailing arm bush rattling over rough road surfaces. My rears are originals with 110,000km (~70,000 miles) with no looseness or audible signs - maybe because of the lithium grease I've subsequently added.

As an aside, the brand new arms I fitted (made by TRW who supply Porsche) had only a minimal amount of grease inside the rubber dust boot to lubricate the Teflon / steel bearing. Maybe normal, maybe not, but I added a little more just to ensure a reasonable lifespan. If you do add too much, the extra lithium will just ooze a little out of the boot.