Clunky suspension...can't find cause.

Beano

Beano

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Firstly I must apologise...this is about my wife's Toyota.
I do own a Peugeot 505, but my wife bought a 2002 Camry Altise just a week ago.

It is a 4 cylinder motor with timing chain (no damn belt to cost her $500 to change !) and has done only 75,000 Ks, which appears to be genuine. She got it from a secondhand dealer.

Everything seems to be pristine, and in fact it the log books show the dates everything was done. It was owned by an old man.

Looking underneath is amazing....the original stickers are still on the suspension springs and other things.

However the suspension is clunky. If I bounce up and down with my body weight on the front and back suspension, it appears to work OK.

But whilst taking it for a drive, over medium-sized bumps you can hear a "doonk...doonk" noise when going over bumps.

It's ALMOST a loose "CLUNK".....but not quite. Hmmmm.....perhaps sometimes.

At first I thought that it was just shitty Toyota suspension, but after driving it a few times, my opinion is that there is definitely something wrong. All I can think of is that the shockies in the front AND rear have somehow deteriorated with age....it is 16 years old.

Looking under the rear, I checked the sway bar bushes but they're OK. And it's all so original under there !
Beaurepaires down the road put it up on their hoist and trhe qualified mechanic had a look but couldn't find anything.

Going over bumps, I can actually FEEL through the back of the drivers seat something loose in the rear. Plus I'm sure there is a similar noise coming from the front....or maybe it just seems that way. Noise is difficult to localize sometimes.

Shitty old Toyota shockies ? Change all shockies ? The rear ones do not have rubber bushes at the bottom....they bolt straight onto the strut. Originally I thought it may have been shockie bottom bushes, but it cannot be...


I'm stumped. :confused: Any suggestions greatly appreciated.
 
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There is not much inside shockies to go "clunk", or "doonk" is there ???
 
We have an ancient Corolla that has terribly "thumpy" suspension (it's the airport car - if someone needs to fly out from Armidale for a day or a week it can be safely left in the airport car park* - no-one would touch it even if we left it unlocked with the key in the ignition!!). It passes it's registration check every year, so whatever makes the noise can't be too serious (or the mechanic that does our rego checks is incompetent).

I haven't even tried to diagnose the Corolla, and I know nothing about Camrys, but if it has a roll bar, does the roll-bar have drop-links (may only be at the front)? Xantias (& other froggies of similar age) certainly do, and when the little 'ball joints" at each end of the drop-link wear they produce a surprising amount of noise and even thumping you can feel.


*Armidale's airport carpark is still free and unlimited - at least for now...

Cheers

Alec
 
The Camry like many Japanese cars has McPherson struts on all four wheels. One source of clunking I have heard is from the roll bar bushes (high up in front of the rear wheels). The hole in them wears. It is a simple fix.
 
You can say anything you want about Toyota, but shitty they're not (part quality wise)

I would second seasink and suggest drop links.

The shocks can clunk if they are out of fluid and bottom out but that would feel differently. Besides, I can't remember when I've last seen a shock out of fluid (and it definitely was not on a Toyota).

Your mechanic needs to use a serious breaker bar to push, pull and lever about the suspension a bit to find the problem. Have you seen them do that? If not, their diagnosis is pulled out of their arse.

All else failing, check if there's any springs broken. Renault 12 have an inactive coil at the top that can break and clunk like all hell yet the car doesn't sink and all works fine so you can't see/tell anything from outside and it is difficult to see even from underneath.
 
They all do it, check Google search
camry.jpg
 
Toyota suspensions are prone to the same wear points as every other rubber mounted strut suspension, front and rear. The number of Google hits reflects the number of these cars on the road, many ageing.

Get under with a decent pry bar, and see which rubber yields. My bet, as above, is the roll bar mounts, because it's common. Drop links are a possibility, but they make a distinctive lighter noise as one drives over even mildly rough surfaces. Strut top mount fails give a quite distinctive thud inside the car.
 
Thanks dudes....will check these tomorrow.

I had Googled it but I think I used different words and didn't get the same results.
 
G'day,

seasink said:
The Camry like many Japanese cars has McPherson struts on all four wheels. One source of clunking I have heard is from the roll bar bushes (high up in front of the rear wheels). The hole in them wears. It is a simple fix.
Click to expand...

and, my old 505, inside the rubber boot mouldings there is bloody big fat washer. On mine one of these managed to get loose and produce nasty noises that took me ages to find - the thing that really pissed me off was that the shockers had recently been replaced by a local 'expert' and they didn't tell me that the boot/s were knackered.... :mad:

cheers,
Bob
 
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