mcgilles

Looking for advice!
Bilstein sport shocks on the car. The problem started right after they were installed. I have a high pitched squeak coming from the back. it takes only a slight suspension travel to make the sound, so its noisiest on relatively smooth roads.

it comes from the upper mounts. when it starts Ican spray some lube on the area of the upper mounts and it will stop. sometimes for a day, sometimes for a month.

I posted about this once before. Iwas given the advice to support the rear suspension with a jack while torquing the bolts. that didn't fix it for me. I also tried tightening them more, no good.

they were assembled according to the supplied instructions which were pretty vague. the nuts on top were tightened just until it started to squeeze the bushings.

looking for any input to make this noise stop! thanks!

voda1

Can't locate the spec but front shocks bushings at the top are torqued to 19 lb-ft and the rears use the same size.

Cybermind

I hate to break it to you but you were supposed to tighten the top nut until the bushings are squeezed to about the same size as the washers in which they are sandwiched. That is quite a bit more than "just until they start to squeeze". Seems to me your top nuts are loose. Easy fix if that is the case.

mcgilles

no reason to hate to break that to me. I'd be more than delighted if that's it. each strut came with "instructions" which was a poorly copied single sheet piece of paper which showed how to assemble the struts for about 2 dozen different cars. no info at all about torquing the nuts, or anything else. just a single drawing for Corvette, this is the orientation of the bushings/washers/mounting plate. every how to I could find focused only on how you get struts on and off the car. then i read somewhere (think it was here) to tighten it until it starts to squish the bushings out a little, that's all it needs. if tightening the nut down to the end of the threaded part will solve this once and for all I'll be happy.
thanks for the help! I'll try to carve some time out this weekend to pull them off again. That part is pretty easy at least.

Cybermind

No.........do not tighten the nut down to the end of the thread travel! You need to tighten the nut only until the rubber bushing (diameter) is squeezed out to approximately the same size as the washers. This means that it will be compressed to about half its original thickness when you are done. Too much tightening may damage the rubber bushing.

Hope this helps

mcgilles

Diameter... Ok. Thanks again... This is why i dont do much mechanical work on my own car. I leave that mostly to the professionals. But this really didn't seem difficult. I'm much more of an electrical person! Thank you.

Narco944

Did this solve your problem?