Originally Posted by
prasad
Hello ,
Faithfully followed the superb instructions on the maintenance page and changed the front two shocks......I seem to get clunks from driver and passenger side on small bumps.....More on the passenger side. Looks like something is loose.....Should the strut tower bolts at the bottom be tightened using Impact Wrenches ??
I tightened the strut housing bolt (circular) to where it was before.....Tightened the control arm bolt......How tight should be the single (22mm) bolt on top of the strut bearing be ?
Thanks.....
-prasad
The top nuts on the strut housing (those accessed from under the hood) are not to be too terribly tight - IIRC the torque on them was in the 25ft-lbs range, and hitting them with an airgun will definitely break the studs.
The big nut on the top of the strut can/should be cranked down as hard as you can get it - it's going to be easiest with the spring compressed, either by the car's own weight or off the car and with the spring collapsed by a spring compressor.
Movement from either of those items should be noticeable with the hood open simply by getting the front end moving up and down - if that's the source of your clunk, you should be able to see it easily.
The big bolts on the bottom of the steering arm do get a very high torque value (don't have Mr. B in front of me), but again, it should be obvious if that's the source of your noise.
Where I got noise in the time immediately following a strut replacement was from the housing itself. I found that the insert had a bit of movement inside the housing. This was remedied by jacking the car up, taking off the wheel on the noise-producing side, and cranking down HARD on the big collar nut that holds the insert into the housing with a big effing pipe wrench. You don't need to remove the strut from the car to do this.
If it continues, you may want to take the strut back off the car, remove the insert, and put a few (very few) ounces of oil into the housing. The oil is there from the factory both for heat dissipation as well as to take up any slack space.
But the BF pipe wrench should be all you need.
--Micah O'C
'17 M2 6MT, Mineral Grey
'04 330i ZHP
'88 M5 2791445
'92 M5T BL01001
formerly '90 535iM, '92 525iT