mikescayenne

Hello all, another noise coming from the cayenne. This happens at full lock left or right when pulling In and out of parking spots or when going over 20mph and turning the wheel left or right. Also happens during hard braking (sometimes) when going straight. There is no play in any of the suspension components in both front wheel wells. We are thinking maybe it’s a control arm bushing, because it seems to only happen when there is a lot of load transfer, but when we checked everything seemed tight, sway bar and sway bar links were tight as well. Does anyone think it might be the control arm bushings are beginning to go bad which is why the sound only happens under heavy load? Thinking of ordering both upper and lower controls arms and sway bar links for the front and seeing if replacing all of that makes the sound go away but we don’t have any hard evidence. Any ideas what this could be? It's a popping noise thats happening and is very loud, sometimes its one pop, sometimes its a few pops. Video link below.

garrett376

Upper control arms are easy to figure out with speed bumps that cause a fast compression; otherwise, you can't tell by looking at them until they are unbolted from the wheel carrier.
Since you had the front end apart to change the differential, I'd be rechecking all of that work: were all three mounting points for the differential properly torqued? Did you re-use bolts and one broke?

My bet is that sound is a loose suspension member, a loose steering rack, a loose subframe mount, or loose a differential.

mikescayenne

yes thats what my friend thinks too (he is the one that helps me with all these repairs)! He thinks something is loose from lowering the subframe and that sound is a bolt thread that is loose, the only thing that makes him skeptical is its been a year since we did that job and 8k miles so why now (and we torqued every single bolt)? Hopefully that's what it is or a broken bolt like you said. i will keep you updated once we get it on the lift and find the culprit. Thanks for your help as always @garrett376 !

Side note, i bought a 911 turbo S and i freakin love it! pic below...

garrett376

Sweet 911!
I find I prefer the Cayenne for most every drive!

I'm curious: did you use new bolts for everything, or re-use any? I'd be interested to know what you find - keep us posted!

mikescayenne

I think we reused all of them, I know for a fact we reused the big ones, but I don’t remember buying bolts for the diff job, only for the valve cover gasket job (because those are aluminum)

mikescayenne

Please see next post…

mikescayenne

we got the cayenne on the lift today and squeezed all the suspension components with a wrench, everything was solid. We then took out the front subframe bolts and looked inside and noticed some cracking in the rubber. We didn’t know if that’s by design though, or if that means they need to be replaced. Anyone familiar with how these are supposed to look?


Picture of the crack circled

You can see the crack there it’s the white line in the rubber

Again another picture showing the crack it’s the white line, is this by design or does this need to be replaced?

mdistel

Check your sway bar links and bushings, maybe even disconnect to rule it out. There was a thread that traced suspension noise back to that.

Pry everything, that noise is so prevalent that you would think you could replicate it or find the movement. I don't think those subframe bushings look any different than they do on my older cayenne with zero clunks.

Mark

mikescayenne

So we retorqued the subframe bolts and gave them an extra quarter turn and sound is now gone!!! Hopefully this holds up! Thanks everyone for your help!