Knocking noise but bushes seem fine??

[S3Si]

Me again! Endless niggly problems...

Anyway, Hope someone can make some suggestions, but when driving over bumps at low speed there is a knocking noise from the rear, it also occasionaly does it when going faster, but rarely. Had a garage look at it and they couldn't be definite, so got a mate (BMW technician - I know I know) to look and all seemed fairly solid around all the bushes (rollbar and wishbone) but he said there was a bit of movement at the top end of both dampers, near to where it joins to car frame. Is this normal for this smallish movement to happen or could this be the culprit? Thanks.

 

[madvw]

I've had this, and i've had audi-techs look twice now. I find that it happens extremely intermittantly, but is more frequent with a loaded car.

confuses the hell out of me, and it really doesn't sound good.

on the plus side though, handling isn't impaired at all.

one thing to check though is that you have all your coils present on the rear springs - just measure your ride height from the top of wheel to wheelarch.

Until it becomes more common, I've just written it of as an S3 "feature".

 

[chrisb]

Somewhere on here there's a thread about the rear seat knocking. My A3 does it all the time. Could it be that?

 

[S3Si]

Cheers. Am facing up to the fact that its a 'feature' for now and will wait for it to get worse, have checked everything that could possibly be loose I think, oh well...

 

[RichA3Turbo]

could be the strup top bearing caps... Could need replacing. They are about £6...But a fair bit of labour to change! Not really a worry though.

Rich