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hey so awhile ago I installed a pair of UMI control arms, including new moog front coil springs and insulators. Post install I have had a spring noise occur when going over speed bumps or hitting bad potholes. I had checked it over and over for loose bolts, if the spring wasn't seated correctly etc. The suspension is tight and there is no apparent damage.
Finally the other day I managed to duplicate the noise when I had my wheels off and I did it by prying on the spring in the "cup" it sits inside on these A-arms. It seems like when the spring is stretched it catches on the cup it sits in causing it to jump a bit and make noise. Has anyone ever had this occur? Wasn't an issue with my original control arms just the UMI's.
Have you contacted UMI to see if they are aware of this being an issue? They can probably work through the issue with you. If it is the fault of the product, I'm confident they'll work with you to make it right.
I installed my UMI arms in February and had the same situation. the springs would creak in the pocket. Everything was/is indexed and seated and torqued absolutely properly. I did send them an email and they have always been super helpful with answering my questions during the past few years of me ordering and installing almost everything in their catalog They mentioned it might be defective springs (which definitely is not the case as they are new-ish moogs), but didn't have a certain answer about the noise for me... and I don't blame them because they couldn't see the issue in person.
I sprayed a little (a little) bit of wd-40 at the lower coil of each spring where it meets each a-arm cup. still had the deep squeak/creek for a bit but now since driving the car probably 70 miles since they have been installed, the creak has gone away as far as I can tell (watch! it will be there when I drive the car later!! ha)
I THINK that it may have been the powdercoating on the inside of the spring pocket/cup causing a slight bit of up-down resistance on the spring as it moved. once this "wore-in" the noise seemed to disappear.
is this pretty much what you are describing too? let me know how it goes for ya. anyone else have this?
I've heard this complaint now and then. After some research we think what is going on is that some spring manufactures use wire to wrap their springs that require a larger diameter to achieve the rate they are shooting for, while other manufactures wrap their springs with different wire that keeps the O.D. of the spring to be very close to factory specs while achieving the higher rates.
I will go into the shop today and take a measurement of the spring buckets on our a-arms and post it here.
We have made some design changes over the last few years to try and alleviate this problem but I think there's still springs out there that because of the O.D. of their springs this will happen with aftermarket A-arms.
I went out into the shop and measured our lower 3rd gen. a-arm.
Uncoated the spring bucket measured 5.76
With powder coat measurement 5.73
These are made to accommodate a "5.5" spring. Like mentioned above some of the different spring manufactures are on the high end of the "5.5" spring which can cause some noise issues.
We don't want to alter (smaller I.D.) the spring bucket dimension and cause the majority of springs to become sloppy.
I would recommend coating the inside of the spring bucket with some Moly paste if you are getting some noise from a tight spring to a-arm tolerance.
My observations have been more to the design of the spring used. Every manufacturer will use slightly different diameter spring steel or wrap them with slightly different spacing depending on desired rate and height. when the spring crosses the outboard side of the pocket closer to the center, you wont get this noise since the spring I already touching the pocket. When the spring crosses closer to the side of the pocket it can catch a little on the outboard lip of the pocket when the spring compresses under load and make this noise. I can make some drawings tonight if this is not was to follow. I corrected this on one of my cars buy indexing the spring a little more in on direction and trimming a little bit off the open end of the spring. Height was not a huge concern since the car had weight jacks.
Had a similar issue with mine...perhaps.Not sure if the cause is the same, but i noticed a clunk as well & realized my spring would try to "hop" on top of the outer pocket/wall.This would happen as i was installing the spring.I never drove the car this way.Instead i just welded this short piece to the a-arms at the pigtail end, just ahead of the stop on the arm.This prevents the spring from trying to jump out of place & ive not heard any clunking/noise since.The spring btw, was popping out toward the ball joint
Well glad to know I'm not the only one going through this. Relieves me from thinking it was caused by a user error. I have had mine set up like this for a few months now, the noise has decreased in frequency over time but it is not entirely gone. Going along what Craig said the moog springs do seem a bit larger in diameter then the originals, though I just eyeballed it.
I really don't want to fight these springs back out of the vehicle to get ones that are smaller so I may just deal with the noise... It was tiring enough getting them in, and not very settling using a internal spring compressor to crush down that spring so much (did it by hand mind you, my compressor died).
If I recall right moog 5604 springs are the stock ride height springs which are the ones I used, not sure if anyone has a set out of a vehicle they could get a measurement on. Also does anyone know of a spring brand that doesn't conflict?
04-10-2017, 04:01 PM
