barney17

hi guys, i've got a 1997/8 1.8T 5spd with H&R springs and bilstein shocks (got the combo, been reading about it here a few years ago) its been on the car for about a year and a half or two. and just about 6 months ago, my front right suspension started creaking. of course, along with some clunks from the lower control arm and a tie rod end.

question is this. TRE's and CA's are all clear now. what could be causing the creak on my front right susp? could it be the shock it self? BUT if I drive it for a long time (300km drive) the creaking goes away. the creak mainly presents itself when going over speed bumps, pot holes and ramps (of course when im running slow enough to hear things happening on the susp)

another one is, while i was on my way to a car club meet, my tach sudenly went from 4k rpm to 1k rpm. 1k would be 4k. if i dropped the throttle and it goes to idle, the tach would go to 0 (my speedo still runs). it made a loud single beep when that happened. when i got to the meet, i just restarted the car and it was fine.

on to the fun run, when we were going to the destination, had no problems whatsoever with the gauges. upon the way back, I was doing some really aggressive driving (we went to some back roads with lots of twisties) my gauges suddenly went fast and the furious. the speedo and tach started juddering while on its way down to 0. all the lights flashed up including CEL. and then my fuel gauge went to empty! i know i still had gas. then i backed off for a few seconds and it went back to normal. BUT my fuel gauge was playing from empty to full it would just flick back and forth. now a few minutes after that, everything went fine again until I got home.

have yet to bring it in to get codes scanned, if there's any.

Sorry for the long post guys! thanks!

Jared,

P.S I live in the Philippines so not much places I can go to for a euro car.

CTA4AVANT

<center><img src="http://www.b2bgreaseguns.com/rimages/533/Ga-001s.jpg"></center><p>
Get a grease gun.

Get some good synthetic grease (Mobil 1)

Get a grease gun injection needle (see picture)

Push grease gun injection needle carefully into each control arm bushing and pump a few pumps of grease into each one.

Voila! No more creaking.

It worked for me and 100K miles later still no creaking.

PS - Make sure you get a "skinny" needle and maybe buy two. They bend easily.<ul><li><a href="http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.toolking.com/images/Products/MediumW54213.jpg&amp;imgrefurl=http://www.toolking.com/performancetools_w54213.aspx&amp;h=125&amp;w=125&a mp;sz=2&amp;hl=en&amp;start=33&amp;tbnid=nFGsZhm9

SlimChriz

I had the same issues with tach and other gauges
The problem was the wires in the connector to the ECU.
My problem was caused by mice climbing up wires into ECU box where their nest was.

so when I hit bumps my dash went into convulsions and sometimes tranny went into safe mode.

But right now the wires would be in there respective locations. when I pulled my ECU out to investigate all the lose wires came out of the connector and it took many moons before they were all back in there homes.

something to look for at least

barney17

thanks. would definitely try and look for the ecu connection.

as for the bushings, how do I know when to stop pumping grease? do i let it over flow or just stop when i "think" it's had enough? will this negatively affect my CA bushing's life?

What if the creaking doesn't go away after this bushing greasing part? where do I look next?

Thanks!

CTA4AVANT

Not sure what to do if the creaking doesn'y go away.

channelv

There are several bushings around, not sure which one is the suspect one.

CTA4AVANT

I just did all of them.

barney17

thanks! will do