yakswak

OK so I was playing around with the shocks tonight, and I was able to introduce the same clunking sound now on the rear left! It's a little different sound but similar...all i did was loosen the top nut.

So can someone comment on optimal ways to tune this better?

Terrance914

You were able to tune out the sound, or were you able to induce more? The springs being loose was something I was thinking about too, but didn't make sense because we tightend up the spring on the front left of your car and it didn't do anything. Hmm, maybe needed to be tightened up more.

yakswak

I think I'm going to loosen it up more and see what happens, and then tighten up a lot and see what happens. I think I'll look at the two extremes, and then finally adjust preload at the end by weighing the suspension.

S2K00

Yeah keep me informed on how it goes. I just don't have a lot of time to play around with all the settings right now. Thanks man

yakswak

I've had some discussions with Buddyclub Japan. When I told them that I've tried adding preload, and decreasing preload, they told me no preload is necessary. Well, this is the way I had it setup originally.

I guess I will try it again.

Thanks

RWD_RCKT

yakswak,
I don't think 0 preload is your answer. I still have a lot of preload on my fronts which I feel are pretty dialed in)

What you should do (at least with the fronts) is take the wheel off and you can look through the coils and see where the dirt accumulates around the shaft of the damper (indicating the max compression the shaft has seen). If you have X" of space between the "dirt ring" and the bump stop... lower the spring perch just under X". And if you want to keep the ride height the same, unscrew the threaded collar at the bottom of the damper the same amount.

Now that being said... this assumes that you have driven the hardest you will ever drive. If you think you will drive harder, give yourself more space in between the "dirt ring" and the bump stop when you do your final adjustment. Otherwise you will get bumpsteer from bottoming out.

yakswak

I loosened the top nut on the "good" side on the rear to try to duplicate this. I got more noise, but the noise was slightly different than what I was getting before. Anyway, it was easy to get rid of it again after I tightened the top nut on the "good" side in the rear...but the "bad" sides on either the front or rear is not going away at all.

yakswak

So I took the front shocks apart again, and this time I took the assembly apart (taking the springs off the dampers). I compared the "good" side and the bad side. There was no difference in the order the dampers were put together.

I unfortunately didn't take any pictures, but I noticed that the pillow collars (the black spacers) had some paint worn off (it's black) on the "bad" side. But, I really didn't notice why one side would make noise and the other wouldn't.

Another thing I'm wondering is whether I need to install the washers that the kit came with? WHen I talk to Buddyclub they say it's ready to go out of the box, but obviously, it's not (preload was not even, bottom collar was loose on some shocks, etc), so I guess that I may have to use these 8 washers that came with the shocks. In this past discussion on Jul, 2004, a user reported that their coilovers did not come assembled. In their discussion, they assembled the shocks with the washers: https://www.s2ki.com/forums/index.php?showt...dy%20club&st=25

I'm kind of stuck here as to what to do...if anyone with these coilovers that do/do not have the noise can comment further, I'd appreciate it.

yakswak

I have another thing to ask:

How did your BC's come assembled? Mine came assembled like this:



But another user back in July was told that the shocks were suppoed to be assembled like this:



Notice that the second picture uses the pillowball uppermount as the top spring perch. In the first picture, there are two top mounts; the whole assembly is able to pivot around the pillowball unit because of this.

So, if you bought BC's "With Pillowball Mounts", how did yours come assembled?

yakswak

OK, finally, after 2 weeks of taking the shocks on and off, the problem was solved! I contacted Buddyclub US earlier this week to talk to one of their technicians. One of the first things he had me do was switch the top mounts from the "good" side to the "bad" side. I guess this was because he thought the bearings in the top mounts may have gone bad. BUT, the noise stayed with the dampers and not the top mounts, so it was decided that I may have faulty dampers.

He sent me one front and one rear damper. I just got them installed...and wow! No more noise, and it's not nearly as jarring as it was before. (it's set up exactly like it was before, same preload, same damper setting, etc). I guess the noise was coming from the shock assembly as it was not compressing under stress. Maybe too much compression damping was setup on two of my shocks. Whatever it was, the two new ones are definitely performing better...I think I now understand why others like these dampers.

Now that this solved it, I'm not sure what the other shocks' problems are. I would suggest going to your shop and calling Buddyclub together, or calling them yourself to see if they can diagnose the problem for you. I think their technicians can help in this situation.