Originally Posted by hatchttu
A quick update, I took the car to NTB, they drove it, put it on the lift and couldn't find anything wrong although they did hear the sound. They didn't see anything that looked off.
So, when I got home I decided to conduct a little experiment. I took the camber bolts out and put the OEM bolts back in. Voila! sound is gone, The bolts looked fine and were nice and tight so I am not sure what was going on but in my case the bolts were the cause of it. Well, I don't want to bash them but for whatever reason they didnt agree with my car. It very well could have been something I did wrong.
|
We've installed eccentric camber bolts for some folks that don't want to pay for camber plates, but it doesn't always end up working smoothly, as you noticed. One thing we have noted is you lose inboard tire clearance with camber bolts or "crash" bolts. You are moving the top of the tire in towards the strut, so it makes fitting wide wheels tougher. With an adjustable strut to mount (camber plate) the top of the strut moves inboard
with the wheel, so no room is lost between them.
They can also slip, which we've seen many times. Sometimes the factory "crash bolt" repair (on strut cars without any factory adjustment, which is all too common) is they simply supply a smaller diameter bolt, which is of course weaker. That's how Subaru does it on the FR-S/BRZ, shown above. We had to tighten the bejezus out of this bolt to keep it from slipping and it made me cringe...
Why was yours making noise? That's a good question. I would look for marks of the wheel or tire rubbing the strut housing. Also, check the factory front swaybar endlink stud at the top, which has a super long stud that can rub the wheel. We usually trim that down to fit 18x11's under the front fenders, or replace them with
Whiteline endlinks.