Ground Control sleeve are noisy?

Soo... test drove the MX6, have a terrible noise while turning. Almost at first thought that somehow my wheel/tire package no longer fit, but that's pretty impossible.

Thinking it has to be the GC setup. Any way to quiet this stuff down?

Setup:

Tokico Illuminas
GC Sleeves
Eibach 550f/500r springs. 6" front, 7" rear.
Ebay/China camber plates/pillowball mounts
2nd gen MX6 strut bearings

Thinking i'm getting spring bind somehow, but it's just a theory at the moment. I did NOT have the sleeves welded to the housings, they perch on top of what's left of the old ground-off perch just about perfectly. In addition, i do NOT have o-rings between the sleeves and housings, as there's so little clearance that i couldn't fit any. Not sure if either of these things really matter.

Can you be more specific what you mean by a terrible noise?

Sounds like a bad tire rub on sheetmetal from inside the car, but the tires aren't rubbing. Haven't heard it from outside yet.

In reply to Swank Force One:

Do you have spring isolators on it?

bravenrace wrote: In reply to Swank Force One: Do you have spring isolators on it?

Nope. This is my first foray into coilovers that aren't "full body" style, and the more i dig into it, the more i find that my basement bargain set wasn't as complete as advertised. (Well, besides the Escort, but i haven't driven that yet to see if it's noisy or not.)

I'm guessing i need these, yes?

the anodized finish will rub off pretty quick where there's rubbing. that should make it easy to find. The lack of o rings might be your issue. if o rings won't fit, try rubber bands.

mw wrote: the anodized finish will rub off pretty quick where there's rubbing. that should make it easy to find. The lack of o rings might be your issue. if o rings won't fit, try rubber bands.

Just because i'm totally lost.... what's rubbing on what that would cause the anodized finish to rub off? The only anodized things are the sleeves and the bottom perch.

Your cheap, Chinese pillow balls (aka spherical joints) have probably failed. The 944 guys have the same problems with those. The more expensive versions use better, name brand spherical joints (Aurora for example).

A stop gap could be to lubricate the joints slightly with some spray lube and see if the noise gets better after cycling the wheel back and forth a few times.

The upper spring hat should be resting on the center of the spherical joint and only at that point. When you turn the steering wheel, the center of spherical joint should be the only thing turning with the entire strut assembly moving as a single unit below it. If the spring hat is resting on the camber plate itself, then you'll need a hardened, tapered spacer made to provide enough clearance to allow the joint to move properly without allowing the spring hat to contact the camber plate. When the joints wear out, they can and will bind when loaded and can fail shortly there after.

The spring isolators mentioned only help reduce binding when the suspension moves up and down. Not when the wheels are turned. Still not a bad idea, but not critical right now.

The factory setups for most strut equipped cars use rubber in place of the spherical joint, so the rotating forces are handled through a separate thrust bearing, which looks similar to the spring isolators mentioned above and can contribute to the confusion.

turboswede wrote: Your cheap, Chinese pillow balls (aka spherical joints) have probably failed. The 944 guys have the same problems with those. The more expensive versions use better, name brand spherical joints (Aurora for example). A stop gap could be to lubricate the joints slightly with some spray lube and see if the noise gets better after cycling the wheel back and forth a few times. The upper spring hat should be resting on the center of the spherical joint and only at that point. When you turn the steering wheel, the center of spherical joint should be the only thing turning with the entire strut assembly moving as a single unit below it. If the spring hat is resting on the camber plate itself, then you'll need a hardened, tapered spacer made to provide enough clearance to allow the joint to move properly without allowing the spring hat to contact the camber plate. When the joints wear out, they can and will bind when loaded and can fail shortly there after. The spring isolators mentioned only help reduce binding when the suspension moves up and down. Not when the wheels are turned. Still not a bad idea, but not critical right now. The factory setups for most strut equipped cars use rubber in place of the spherical joint, so the rotating forces are handled through a separate thrust bearing, which looks similar to the spring isolators mentioned above and can contribute to the confusion.

I actually had a guy on RRAX look at the mounts, and he said he wouldn't expect any sort of issues with them until farther down the road under extreme use. Said the bearings were way bigger than what normally comes in these, and i don't know that i'd expect them to fail within 20 feet. Upon installation, there was no free play in any of the 4, and they moved smoothly, albeit requiring slightly (maybe 20%) more force than the units in my Cusco plates on the Escort.

I do have a thrust bearing in play. This is actually what's contacting the bottom of the plates. Same setup that "Gavin" on RRAX uses on his DSP MX6:

I'm not ruling the plates out at this point, just somewhat doubtful that they would already be the problem.

Swank Force One wrote:

mw wrote: the anodized finish will rub off pretty quick where there's rubbing. that should make it easy to find. The lack of o rings might be your issue. if o rings won't fit, try rubber bands.

Just because i'm totally lost.... what's rubbing on what that would cause the anodized finish to rub off? The only anodized things are the sleeves and the bottom perch.

And I tried to use O-rings when I put his sleeves on.....there wasn't any room. So rubber bands wouldn't even fit in there.

I am pretty sure he is hearing the same thing I am(and my sleeves are welded to the housings, have very nice spherical bearings in my CC plates, and have articulating top hats) Only turning does it make a noise like the springs are binding and releasing.

Swank Force One wrote:

turboswede wrote: Your cheap, Chinese pillow balls (aka spherical joints) have probably failed. The 944 guys have the same problems with those. The more expensive versions use better, name brand spherical joints (Aurora for example). A stop gap could be to lubricate the joints slightly with some spray lube and see if the noise gets better after cycling the wheel back and forth a few times. The upper spring hat should be resting on the center of the spherical joint and only at that point. When you turn the steering wheel, the center of spherical joint should be the only thing turning with the entire strut assembly moving as a single unit below it. If the spring hat is resting on the camber plate itself, then you'll need a hardened, tapered spacer made to provide enough clearance to allow the joint to move properly without allowing the spring hat to contact the camber plate. When the joints wear out, they can and will bind when loaded and can fail shortly there after. The spring isolators mentioned only help reduce binding when the suspension moves up and down. Not when the wheels are turned. Still not a bad idea, but not critical right now. The factory setups for most strut equipped cars use rubber in place of the spherical joint, so the rotating forces are handled through a separate thrust bearing, which looks similar to the spring isolators mentioned above and can contribute to the confusion.

I actually had a guy on RRAX look at the mounts, and he said he wouldn't expect any sort of issues with them until farther down the road under extreme use. Said the bearings were way bigger than what normally comes in these, and i don't know that i'd expect them to fail within 20 feet. Upon installation, there was no free play in any of the 4, and they moved smoothly, albeit requiring slightly (maybe 20%) more force than the units in my Cusco plates on the Escort. I do have a thrust bearing in play. This is actually what's contacting the bottom of the plates:

Doesn't matter if the materials are prepared improperly. When loaded, what does the ball joint rub against when force is applied to turn it?

The fact that you have a thrust bearing in the mix further indicates the spherical joint is to blame as the only metal on metal area would be the spherical joint or the thrust bearing itself.

The other option would be setting the camber too far negative causing the spring/spring hat to rub on the inside of the strut tower. Highly unlikely, but it could be possible on some cars.

Think about the way the forces are acting on the steering knuckle and what would have to happen in order to have the springs move separate from the strut/steering knuckle and cause binding or metal on metal contact.

Just go spray some lube on the top and bottom of the damned things and see if anything changes before you do anything more. If it doesn't help, then you'll have to pull them down anyway and investigate further. If you do, take lots of pictures and share them and we'll see what we can see.

In reply to turboswede:

You're forgetting the metal to metal contact of the tophat->spring->perch.......

Hm, mine don't make any noise.

Alrighty, will investigate further tomorrow when i get up to the shop. Will bring lube, also to ease the pain.

yamaha wrote: In reply to turboswede: You're forgetting the metal to metal contact of the tophat->spring->perch.......

but those shouldn't be turning and causing binding with the suspension at rest and wheels turning back/forth. The bearings, even if they were complete crap, would still move before those parts given the forces involved.

Mine definitely doesn't sound like anything a spherical ball could cause.....it sounds like a spring twisting and popping when it releases. It is nearly the same suspension design as Ben's.

Then there is something very wrong.

The only reason your springs would not rotate with the struts themselves would be if the upper spring hats were unable to rotate properly and that is not a good situation.

I have had GC coilovers on several cars and none have made the sound you are describing.

I have used duct tape in the past in lieu of the rubber O-rings. Wrap it around the shaft of the strut housing until the sleeve fits over it snugly. The noise you are hearing could be the sleeve rotating around the strut housing, not the top hat.

Swank, I had to do the same thing that pimpm3's picture shows. I had some foam backed tape that I put around the strut housing because the sleeve would make a bit of noise against the strut.

+2 on the duct tape. I did that on mine on my MK2 VW as well. No weird noises from mine.

Just to be clear, do you hear the sound while turning the wheel, or after turning the wheel, but while the car is going around the corner?

I'm trying to understand whether the noise is coming from the rotation of the coil over housing, or from the compression of the spring/strut combo while under load?

There hasn't been enough load to compress it. It did the noise first backing out of the driveway at 2mph and it has a LOT of spring for its weight.

I'm going to do the duct tape wrap for sure.

Spherical top mounts make a lot of noise. Having the springs adjusted to anything less then zero preload will allow the spring to move and rattle.

At full droop on the lift, there's a good 3" of space between top of spring and the mount. It's gonna get worse, the front end is about 2" too high right now.

Just settling would be cool.