Put about 400 miles on the car going back and forth to Dan Caron's Meeting of the clans this past weekend. First good long runs in a while.
I've always seemed to have a noisy front end--clunks, crunches and other mysterious sounds. These sounds only occured when coming off a stop position or when braking to stop when the car loses momentum--never when running.
Earlier this year, the mechnic discovered missing bolts on the lower control arm (2 of 4 were missing) and the other 2 were loose. Replacing those quieted things down but not silent, and solved a brake pulling problem as well.
On the way home from Dan's some action in a rest stop parking lot made so much noise I brought it to the mechanic first thing yesterday morning. Up on the lift, nothing obvious.
Started testing the torque on all nuts. The main problem turned out to be the brackets that hold the sway bar to the frame--he was able to get 2 turns out of them until they were torqued down. Funny though, is that they LOOKED tight with the head bottomed out on the split ring lock washer. Looks can be deceiving. Also: the upper control arm isn't taking grease.
Moral?
1) Check the sway bar if you have funky noises.
2) When greasing it isn't good enough to put the gun to the zerk, you need to ensure the grease is getting in!!
Car is quieter now then it has ever been!!
Michael Salemi
1969 280SL
Signal Red w/Black Leather
Restored
