If y'all remembered I had a thread going about 2 mos. ago about clunking.

I replaced the sway bar bushing with energy suspension; retorqued control arms, relubed the control arms.

All to no avail.

Today, I installed new Mazda sway bar links. I was hoping that this was the reasons as the links had 105K miles on them.

Still clunking. Still a huge racket just driving down the road. Worse if there are bumps on the road.

So the only thing left for me to do is buy new control arms as I don't feel like pressing the JLab bushings out and repress in the OEM bushings.

Stay tuned.

 

What about your toe links?

 

Wow, I was all ready to read about what your problem turned out to be. How dissappointing. Tear that thing down and take some pics!

 

I have the clunking sound comming out from there rear also during acc. with quick clutch release. For me, the rx7store toelink didn't help. Its still an on going problem.

 

If there's any play in the rear toe links stock or add-on they will rattle more-so over a rough road. The average heim joints use on add-on links are junk, there can't be any play in them or you will have noise.

 

poman, can I hear another colorful analogy about Jim's bushings? you know, the old wooden battleship listing into the wind, creaking and groaning or however it goes, LOL

I haven't laughed that hard in a long time....wow that was good stuff

 

I'm gonna suggest something, although it probably isn't applicable to you.

I have a mild clunking, I didn't have it when I asked a friend to listen.

It turned out to be one of the bolts on the passenger seat.

 

I am having the same exact problem. I thought it was my adjustable sway bar endlinks so I put the stocks back in and same thing. I also have the poly sway bar bushings. I thought it was the sway bar mounts, nope. I took out the shocks and reinstalled the springs and retorqued, nope. I retorqued the upper control arms, that didn't fix it. Checked my steering rack.all good. Secured my radiator and misc. Still clunks. I am stumped. The only thing I can think is the connection of the upper control arm to the frame. If you looses the bolts, the arm has some wiggle from where the bolt goes through the holes. Maybe this play is whats causing the clunking even after torquing the bolts down.

The weird thing is that I didn't notice it when I first drove the car after getting it back on the road. It seems to have developed sometime later. After a couple hunderd miles. Please let me know if you find anything definative. Maybee jim has some input of what it might be. It is hard to drive and look under the car at the same time

Mike

 

you need to replace the pillow ***** on the rear arms

 

https://www.rx7club.com/3rd-gen-archives-73/after-2-years-no-more-clunk-woo-hoo-227949/

 

How long are people not going to know this?

 

FWIW, It's probably NOT the upper 'A' bushings. After replacing nearly all the pillowball bushings in the rear, it quieted down alot but I still had a little rattle at slow speed over rough pavement. I was convinced that the source was in the 'A' arm bushings after noticing slop in the bolt holes. I bought a new OEM set only to learn that the new ones also have that same "slop". I just got two more pillow-ball bushings for my toe-links, hopefully that will cure it.

Anyone need a spanking new set of 4 rear 'A' arm bushings?

 

The clunking comes from the front. I know caused I got a friend to rock the car by pushing against the roof and I can hear it clunks and pops in the front as he rocks it back and forth.

Front arms and rear arms and control links are all less than 10K. The sway bar is mounted on the Crooked Willow heavy duty sway bar mount. Double checked that too with the right torque.

At this point, it's less of a headache to just go buy new control arms from Mazda and pop them in.

I was hoping that the sway bar links were it and even mentally prepared an apology speech to Jim when I was driving back from the dealer with the parts.

 

did you try and localize it to the strut or the upper strut mount?
good luck.

 

Have you priced new control arms? The uppers aren't too spendy, the lowers are expensive. I'd say your looking at ~$2K worth of arms for just the front.

 

Like Poman said, it's not in the rear. The clunking is coming from the front. This is why I checked things like steering rack and radiator mounts. I appreciate the link but please keep up.

 

I had clunking from the front and it turned out to be the front A-arm bushing... it was just too loose. Too bad the A-arm bushing cannot be replaced. I had to get a new (used) A-arm with the bushing on it. This solved my problem.

 

Here's a pic. It's the ball-joint actually.

 

The upper A-arms with the JimLab bushings installed were low mileage ones. I also checked to these new (used) ball joints to see if they were still in good shape by the rotation test with a fish scale in the manual: they were nice and tight, not like the 100K upper A-arms.

The thing about the upper A-arms were that they were NOT designed to move axially along the longitudinal center line of the bushings (not the ball joint here). So if your ball joints and bushings are nice and tight, there shouldn't be any noise.

The lower A-arms were designed so that they move along the longitudinal axis of the bushings so that the front toes will change under braking and acceleration. This resulted in the clunking when you're reversing the car using the OEM bushings.

The JimLab bushings were NOT designed to move along the longitudinal axis. Don't know what to conclude with this yet.

 

My bro. had a similar experience and he was ready to start tearing stuff down to fix it and it ended up being a forgotten wrench under the hood! HA, Ha, ha ! ! !

 

As someone who has removed and replaced the stock Mazda bushings in the front lower suspension arms I can 100% assure you that they do not move at all along the longitudinal axis of the car. The only things that "gives" is the distortion of the rubber itself.

As for suspecting the front swaybar being the source of the clunk you should have just tried removing one endlink and seeing if the noise stopped. That would have saved you some money...

...on the subject of money have you priced new front lower control arms? They're quite expensive. If I suspected that as a problem I would just buy bushings. There's no need to buy the arm unless the lower balljoint is shot; that's the only way to replace it in that case.

 

You could be right. However, the force being able to be developed by human hands ain't nothing like those encountered by a big fat 60 lbs tire and wheel combo.

My source for movement in the bushing is the Jack Yamaguchi big book on RX7, the one with the red RX7 on the front with a high powered zoom lens. This book went thru complete development with a section on the Lemans 787 etc ($50 at Malloy). If you raise enough of a stink, I may scan a few pages on the suspension development in for you doubter out there.

 

Yeah, but why not replace them after 105K? $150 at Malloy for both.

 

Yeah, I may have to reconsider this: I was under the impression that they're about $500 each, not $1000 each. If so, it ain't worth $2K for a car that I probably can't sell for more than $12K even though the total into it is about $50K.

How much are the OEM front lower control arm bushings?

 

I'm fuzzy on the cost of the lower control arms, I'm thinking that Mazda wanted $750ea for them. That probably means that you could get them from Malloy for $500 ea, Mazdaspeed Motorsports for $400ea. My memory is also foggy on the upper control arms, I'm thinking they are $200 ea, but I think that is the Mazdaspeed price. That means they might list around $350-400 ea.

So list price your looking at a little over $2K for front control arms.

Mazdaspeed prices your looking at around $1100 or so.

I think bushings are between $40-80 ea. 8 bushings will cost $320-640, plus maybe 2-3 hrs of labor if you take the arms to a machine shop to press them in and out.