Saturday, September 27, 2008 - 07:20 am, by: Chris Papas(Papasc)
1991 V8 Limited.
Over the last 6 months, I have replaced the 2 front air struts. The car maintains height, rides well on the highway, but then on another day it will be a little noisy out of the rear left and very sloppy overall, especially on our crappy b roads where I live. Seems to be inconsistent. Changing settings to either a higher ride or stiffening the ride makes no difference to the sloppiness (the height and sport mode work, just doesn't make much diff to the feel).
I understand it would be ideal to change the rears as well, but is there something else that might be causing this. I've been told by peddars I have splits in the rear bushes (?) They weren't sure if this is normal for this car.
Any ideas ?
Peter Nitschke Junk Filterer South Australia UZZ30 UZZ31
Saturday, September 27, 2008 - 11:16 am, by: Peter Nitschke(Pen)
Rear bushes usually last pretty well, though the rubber ages. The front LCA bushes suffer the worst. I changed the fronts which were split etc as they usually are, 3 years later I changed the rears, and the old ones looked OK, but the rubber had gone off a bit.
I had the left rear toe-in bolt come loose which made a small amount of noise and allowed that wheel to pull the car around a bit on bumps.
Saturday, September 27, 2008 - 11:47 am, by: Evan Kaio(Knave)
Chris, have a look at the struts for any sign of oil leakage, could be that the dampening of the strut has been affected. If it's a strut leak (oil), when you hit a pothole the car will want to jump out at the rear end. Check also the TEMS connectors at the struts.
Saturday, September 27, 2008 - 05:36 pm, by: Kristian Bird(Kgb)
Shouldn't be an air leak at least, i managed to drive mine with a slight leak for quite some time without any effect on driving performance. Simply would drop down over night and while i was driving the pump would kick in a little more often then is normal.
If it's driving like poop I'd go for something in the area of bushes, when's the last time it had a wheel alignment?
I just replaced full front end bushes and camber pins, and have done the rear too. My soarer has done 135,000... It's surprising that peddars wasn't sure about it, my local mechanic was able to figure out all of mine...
If the noise you're getting is a "gu-dunk-a-dunk" sort of sound, like somethin is kinda loose/floppy/not quite connected. Probably bushes, replacing mine fixed this sound, and allowed me to drive my car in a straight line, which I found helpful.
Keep in mind, these cars weren't exactly designed for Aussie country roads, moon landings or assaults on the death star. All of which i would say have about the same toll on the car.