Knocking after suspension refresh

[Rickg]

Hi guys,

I'm a long time lurker on the forum and have owned my 2005 mk5 gti for just over a year now. It's been a great daily driver and I decided to give the suspension a refresh as its done 101k. So last week I decided to have the following done:

- Inner front wishbone bushes (oem spec)
- Complete front tie rods (left and right, inner and outer, oem spec)   
- Front and rear drop links (oem spec)
- Sachs shocks all round (oem spec)
- Top mounts all round (oem spec)
- Genuine sub frame bolt and shim renewed (x2 bolts)
- ST (by KW) lower springs (-30mm drop)
- Flo-flex Poly arb bushes all round (23.6mm front, 21.7mm rear) purchased off ebay, seem super hard
- 4 wheel alignment

The car drives like a absolute pig on mildly rough/even road surfaces! The rear of the car is by far a lot more worse than the front with a lot of clunking, but there is still all sorts of clunking from the front too. In essence, I have made the car drive worse than what it was like on the old and tired parts! I have checked all the new parts have been installed correctly, rear springs are sitting on their perches, all bolts are nice and tight, I've added further grease to all the bushes but still with no joy.

I assumed ST springs would be very road compliant, as they are made by KW but having done so research on the forum no one seems to have any feedback on them. I really didn't have the lower the car and I am tempted to go back to the stock springs but thought I would ask you guys for assistance before spending another £200 on changing parts and alignment. The arb bushes were an implulse buy, as they were cheap in comparison to Powerflex, but they are very hard bushes which I imagine won't help?

On top of all of this, I have started to get a loud clicking sound from my steering wheel when i'm driving over rough roads in a straight line (no clunking when moving the wheel side to side whilst stationary).

If anyone can offer any advise that would be awesome!

Rick

[muff1991]

The clicking through steering wheel will be the steering rack incorrectly fitted or the bolts are night tight enough. Had this on my cousins car.

It might well be the new springs that are giving the harsh impression, and the hard ARB bushes may not help. As for knocking.. you’ll have to track it down.
triple check everything. Before spending money.


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[Rickg]

Hi mate, thanks for your input! We changed the springs back to oem, and for some reason there still a very strange bounciness from the rear end, it's as though the back of the car is much stiffer than the front! The rear end has new sachs shocks, new oe spec top mounts, new sach oe springs, new oe drop links and poly arb bushes. The car feels like it has no dampening at the rear which is pointing towards the shocks, I'm very confused!

[chigmuss]

Can you get to the underside easily and get a look at the ARB bushings? The replacement of these is fairly involved and (presuming someone else fitted the ARB bushes) they would have had to have drilled the VW brackets off. One possibility is the clamps around the old ARB bushes have not nipped up properly on your new bushes. Also, the subframe needs dropping a fair bit to manoeuvre out the ARB. As someone has already said, double check all the bolts have been re-tightened. They are all stretch bolts so any loosened off should have been replaced. Perhaps if some old ones were re-used they are now not tightening up to spec?
'Puddings' guide on ARB's in the 'how to' section would help you visualise all the bolts that would have been undone for the ARB job.
Hope that's of some help but ultimately you're gonna need to get under the car and check the spec of the bolts.

[pudding]

I think the problem here is 'oe spec' and not actual 'oe' genuine parts.

Chassis stuff should always be OE or better imo. Every bolt under there (apart from the brake carriers) is a stretch bolt also.  Something else to budget for!

[Rickg]

Hi guys! Thank you all for the kind advice, we finally managed to track down the cause of the rear end knocking to a faulty shock. I also went back to the stock springs and now the car drives very nice indeed! Also, all of the ‘oe spec’ parts I have used on the car are sachs, febi and lemforder, which from past experience I’ve not issues with, I hope this is still the case with the gti!