Who was the culprit? The stabilizer bar bushings. Off all things. Who would have thought 2 pieces of rubber could have caused so much headaches.
So how much did this part cost ? RM30 a piece. TCEAS apparently have RM30 listed as the price as well. Unfortunately they did not have stock so I had to go visit my friendly neighbourhood spare part shop Double Champion.
Installation took a little more than 30 minutes as they had to dislodge the tie rod ends to access the stabilizer bushing nuts.
I will be writing another piece later on as a post mortem for gluk. Stay tuned!
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Well the stabilizer bushings did not take a whole day, today I made an appointment with TCEAS's chief technical to troubleshot pop noise while going through bumps and the gluk noise.
There were a few test drives involved, removing the left strut and installing it back. We found the right inner tie rod faulty and that had to be replaced. TCEAS pricing puts it at RM225 after a 10% discount and another RM45 for labour. I still think TCEAS parts pricing is cut throat. They comfort you with a 90 days warranty.. bah...
Anyway the strut was removed and disassembled to look for problems. None could be seen visually. The test drive after it was refitted.... no more noise. At least for the time being. Going to monitor this.
I'm guessing its due to this little part. See picture below. Assembly could have been shot previously.
One interesting bit observed during testing was the difference between damping for Tan Chong OEM absorbers and Tokico Japan absorbers. It took a lot of effort to press down the shaft for the Tokico Japan ones. The Tan Chong OEM just goes up and down easily.
- T30 Absorber: Tokico Japan - Hard
- T30 Absorber: ETCM OEM - Soft
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ReplyDeleteStumbled upon your blog while looking for the source of my 2003 x-trail's (with 165,000+ Km) clunking/gluking noise (front and back). Very informative.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I understand from your blog, it is the front and rear stabilizer bars' bushing gone bad and the lower trailing arm bushing, even though slightly crack (as are mind) is not the cause?
So far, the workshop in Kota Kinabalu quoted me RM85 for a set of stabilizer bar bushing (parts only). Haven't called TCES for a quote yet.
What are your thoughts on this. Thanks.
Chan SC
Chance,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the compliments. I am glad some of the information are helpful.
Yes for my case the source of the noise was the worn out stabilizer bar bushings. Replacing the LCA did not solve my issue then until I tried the stabilizer bush replacement. If I don't think there is any way to verify them visually without taking them out.
If your LCA bushes are starting to see wearing, you should start assessing the area. It could be normal wear and tear or something else is contributing to it.
Unless you know specifically what is broken you can replace that faulty part. For unknown cases, its always best to start replacing them starting with the cheapest one first. If i had tried the stabilizer bush first, i might still be driving around with a cracked LCA bush :P
No harm checking out TCEAS for their price.