Hi all
Hope somebody resourceful can help me on this one! A couple of months ago I was doing some, shall we say, "vigorous" driving in my '95 Cabriolet when all of a sudden a loud knocking noise started up from the front of the car. It's especially bad under hard acceleration in 1st and 2nd. This rang a bell with a similar problem I had with an old 80 TDi I used to have, and my stomach just fell - I could never work out what was wrong with the 80 either, and scrapped the ****** thing in the end!
Anyway, the main symptom is the massive half-inch gaps visible between the front suspension top cups and the chassis, when you look under the bonnet. With the car off the ground and the wheel off, you can yank the hub up and down and bump and rattle the top mounts around in their sockets, which I'm assuming wasn't a design feature!
So I replaced the rubber strut mounts and even the steel spring cups with new ones, reassembled it all nice and tight and the gap is still there, bump bump bump. The maddening thing is that it's a simple setup assembled perfectly with all brand new parts and still does it! Does anyone know which part has failed? It's driving me nuts - I can strip and rebuild an engine but I can't seem to fix a simple rubber mount!
Hope somebody resourceful can help me on this one! A couple of months ago I was doing some, shall we say, "vigorous" driving in my '95 Cabriolet when all of a sudden a loud knocking noise started up from the front of the car. It's especially bad under hard acceleration in 1st and 2nd. This rang a bell with a similar problem I had with an old 80 TDi I used to have, and my stomach just fell - I could never work out what was wrong with the 80 either, and scrapped the ****** thing in the end!
Anyway, the main symptom is the massive half-inch gaps visible between the front suspension top cups and the chassis, when you look under the bonnet. With the car off the ground and the wheel off, you can yank the hub up and down and bump and rattle the top mounts around in their sockets, which I'm assuming wasn't a design feature!
So I replaced the rubber strut mounts and even the steel spring cups with new ones, reassembled it all nice and tight and the gap is still there, bump bump bump. The maddening thing is that it's a simple setup assembled perfectly with all brand new parts and still does it! Does anyone know which part has failed? It's driving me nuts - I can strip and rebuild an engine but I can't seem to fix a simple rubber mount!
