718 Spyder - front suspension clonk

[Tony B2]

Yes, I know it is not going to offer limo levels of ride comfort and refinement, but.....

Mine is making quite frequent, but irregular "clonk" type noises, either from the front suspension, or the bulkhead area, difficult to say which.

It is difficult to demo as it seems quite random, sometimes on very small road imperfections, sometimes on much more significant ones (e.g. going over a raised pedestrian crossing, at low speed).

My dealer agrees there is a noise, but has not yet been able to pin down the actual source of the problem

Car has about 7k miles now.

Due for another dealer visit in a couple of weeks.

Any ideas to assist the dealer investigation?

TIA

[curley]

Its almost certainly the spring settling on the spring seat .Common on the Spyder and nothing to worry about .
Mine does it , as does my friends .

[andygo]

Tell them to get a proper experienced tech to look at it? Soory, I know thats not the answer you were looking for, but couldn't resist.

I'd suggest either tuning fork or possibly drop link. Easy enough to undo one drop link and drive the car to see if the noise stops.

Good luck, intermittent noises are a nightmare to sort generally..

[Tony B2]

curley said:

Its almost certainly the spring settling on the spring seat .Common on the Spyder and nothing to worry about .
Mine does it , as does my friends .

I did think that when it first started to happen, but it is sufficiently frequent now to be pretty annoying.

I hate rattles!

[Tony B2]

andygo said:

Tell them to get a proper experienced tech to look at it? Soory, I know thats not the answer you were looking for, but couldn't resist.

I'd suggest either tuning fork or possibly drop link. Easy enough to undo one drop link and drive the car to see if the noise stops.

Good luck, intermittent noises are a nightmare to sort generally..

They will be applying under-body microphones (apparently) in order to narrow down the source, and I think they suggested that this might be necessary for a Porsche warranty claim

[LunarOne]

I've started getting this on my 2014 981 Boxster S with 39k miles. The sounds seems to be coming from the front nearside, but it doesn't always happen. I assumed it's to do with the number of speed humps and potholes and imagine it might be a worn or hardened bush since the car is approaching 10 years old. At the last MOT I asked the tested about it and he had a look and couldn't mind anything loose and said everything looked fine. I've also just had both front wheels off and arch liners out to replace my a/c condensers, so I spent extra time cleaning it all out, looking closely and not finding anything. The PASM dampers all feel fine too.

[Romo]

I had same issues on my former 718 GT4, It came from the right front side. A high snappy sound.

I did have the car checked at the time; the dealer found stone chips between the right front spring. The stone or cracked, or were catapulted out.

Pics of the damaged right front spring;

[Tony B2]

Interesting - the stones problem has been mentioned elsewhere, too.

[Tony B2]

Romo said:

I had same issues on my former 718 GT4, It came from the right front side. A high snappy sound.

I did have the car checked at the time; the dealer found stone chips between the right front spring. The stone or cracked, or were catapulted out.

Pics of the damaged right front spring;

I had a look around underneath the car over the weekend, and having found a remarkable amount of crud stuck in various places (no, I have not been off-road!) I decided to get busy with the jet-wash and its underbody nozzle.

As well as the underfloor regions I spent sometime in the wheel arches (without taking the wheels off).

Not a huge amount of crud came off, if the residue on the drive surface was anything to go by.

However.....I took the car out for the first time last night, since the noises started, and.....silence.

Drove for about 30 minutes on various good and crappy surfaces and there was not a hint of any untoward suspension noises/clonks.

Surely that cannot have fixed it?

We will see....