Suspension problem - help!
 

Last weekend I replaced the shocks, springs, and sways in my stock RX8. I took my time, rented a spring compressor, bought a torque wrench and torqued everything down to spec and then got a 4 wheel alignment the next day. I will post the results of the alignment in a minute.

The gear:

Mazdaspeed springs and shocks and Racing Beat sways.

I followed these steps:

http://www.hi-impact.org/ryang/modif...ock_front.html

https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-do-yourself-forum-73/diy-lowering-springs-install-23403/


Now, my problem is that there is a clunking on the rear right side, but I think it happens on both sides. I can't really tell. The springs seem highly compressed - I'll try to take a pic. But the top 3 coils are touching.

Also, the rear right wheel/fender gap is 2 fingers (scientific, I know) while the rear left side gap is one finger width. In other words, the right side is riding higher up.

I made sure the rear sway isn't upside down. In fact, I positioned the rear sway on the ground under the car with the stock one still on to make sure it lined up correctly. It just happens that the Racing Beat sticker is face-up on the drivers/left side, hah.

I torqued the pivoting bushings with the wheels on the ground. The only thing I can think of that I may have done wrong is to torque the sway bar-end link bolts with the car in the air - unloaded. I don't think that would make a difference, would it?

It seems to drive really well. No complains there. Just a clank sound over bumps and a ride height difference.

Oh, the other question I had was which springs were the fronts and which were the rears. The Mazdaspeed instructions were all in Japanese, lol. The thread above said the longer ones were the rears and the shorter ones were the fronts, so I assumed (hopefully correctly) that this held true for the Mazdaspeed springs too.

Help! Here is a pic from today. Looks good!

I found the rears would almost go on without a spring compressor, but the fronts were very hard to compress.....

You have the Read Sway bar installed backwards.. I just did the same exact thing. Its a quick easy fix easy mistake..
Here is the link for it.. https://www.rx8club.com/showthread.p...ay+bar+install

Here are some pics:


I'll double check if it's upside down. I'd find that hard to believe since I specifically triple checked this after reading the posts about that very problem.

However, I hope you're right because it is such an easy fix, ego be damned. :lol:

Alignment numbers
 

Here are the alignment numbers

Mazda, 2004, RX-8, Sports Suspensions

Primary Angles

Looks like your sway bar is NOT installed wrong. You would be able to see where it was hitting and making the noise.

Yeah.. you have it installed correctly... well that was my only guess. well good luck with finding the problem.. sorry I couldnt help anymore

did you cut the bump stops?

Did you swap the front and rear springs when you did your install? Just a thought maybe...?

^+1

I understand the instructions may have been in japanese. Have you tried looking up or asking another forum member who has ms springs which one's are supposed to be in the front?

Here's some long shots:

Were you sure to line up the springs to the shocks? There's certain grooves that the spring is supposed to settle into. It could cause some noise.

Have you checked the bushings? A friend of mine messed up his bushings after he installed his springs and it made a weird sound afterwards.

When you removed the spring from the shock, were you sure to reassemble the strut correctly? there's a lot of little cushion parts in the shock that could make some noise if it's not properly reassembled.

Im having issues also, I lowered mine and my front pass side is making a 'popping' noise at times.

**Sigh**

Puttin it on my "to be fixed in 2009" checklist.

OMG! I have the same setup and have the same sound in the rear right. I have gone to three shops and they couldn't find out what's wrong. It has been two years and it still a mystery.. Please let me know if you solved this mystery..

Thanks!

I've had this problem also. rear passenger side over larger speed bumps (except at very low speeds)
been looking for a solution and it seems to be somewhat of a common problem, but nothing yet. good luck!

btw, i'm on stock shocks/sways, just springs so i doubt that is causing it. have tried reassembling the rears thinking maybe something wasn't seated correctly, but no go. honestly, it doesn't cause many problems for me except for bumps so I stopped caring.

If the spring wasnt installed into the spring perch groove it would pop and move till it found the spot. Maybe you tighten the bolt on the shock to the spring perch way to tight? Just thinking of stuff.

^He would have to have tightened it REALLY TIGHT to make the spring compress that much.

i know what you mean though - it's kinda tough to try and figure out how the spring could be that compressed..

Thanks for the tips guys.

As for the bump stops, I did cut about 3/4" - 1" on all four bump stops.

As for the springs, has anyone with the Mazdaspeed springs put the longer ones in the front? I don't know. A search reveals nothing other than DIYs.

I made sure to put everything back on in the correct order. I had the mazdaspeed instructions and the robin yang instructions on a laptop with me. The right side is definitely riding higher up.

As for aligning the springs into the strut spring perches, I noticed on the right side it is about 1.5 inches away from the end of the perch if you look at it from the side or about maybe 20 degrees rotation if you are looking at it from the top/bottom.

Everything was torqued as per Mazda. around 70 ft-lbs for the lower multilink bushings and strut bolt and around 30-40 for everything else. I'm just generalizing from memory here.

If I take it to a shop would they be able to figure it out? It's strange that other people have similar problems. Maybe I need to buy a wireless USB camera and tape it down there, haha.

Actually, I'm such an A/V computer geek I may just do that. Need prob a 60fps camera with a mic to align the clunk with the motion.

Half rack of PBR and your tool box. Take it apart check it all and back on. What I would do instead of scratching my balls over the sound.

Actually I have one idea. The spring is really close if not touching the body of the car - the one that creates the "hole" that extends into the trunk.

I have tried to slide a piece pf paper in between the two and it tore...I'll try to get a better shot. How does one fix this? The spring doesn't really move. Is the body too close to the suspension?

:lol:
Hah. Yeah you're probably right. I'm stuck in a hotel for a month so I just get to sit here and scratch away. Or take it to a shop. :eyetwitch

As far as ride height goes, the only thing I can think of is that the springs somehow got mixed up during installation and you may have put a rear spring in the front and vice versa.

I also have the Mazdaspeed suspension and had a clunking noise on my rear passenger side suspension. Take a look at this technical service bulletin for a Mazda 6. This is what I did to fix the problem:

http://www.finishlineperformance.com...3-04-1348a.pdf

Go to the Mazda parts department and order the parts listed. It's only a few bucks. You might want to double up and order 4 of the small insulators and use 2 of them for the top part of each spring. The small insulators cover the upper part of the spring and using 2 of them will get you more coverage since a lot of the spring is compressed at the top. I think I only used 1 insulator on the bottom.

I only installed the rubber sleeves on the rear passenger side and that was enough to get rid of the noise. I went ahead and used 2 of the rubber sleeves on the top part of the spring to make sure that the rubber part covered most of the spring sections which were coming into contact with each other. Hope this helps.

interesting
too bad im too lazy to take it back out. good to know though

I used a couple of small pieces of rubber hose between the last spring and the perch.....that quieted mine down. This was on the JIC's though

Thanks! Will check it out. This is actually kind of depressing. Why did they put so many coils on the rear so that 4 or 5 touch each other? Seems like a waste of metal.

Hi. First time I try to contribute. Not sure how but here it goes.

Recently I changed my 4 shocks for OEM's. For my surprise, my 8 ended around 3/4" to 1" inch higher on front than what I understand was original, rear right ended near 1/2" lower than expected and rear left ended about 1" lower than expected. Got everything double checked and nothing appears to be wrong. Finally decided to change springs and bought RB's. My 8 seems to be more levelized although rear left still is a little lower than right. I was thinking to get new shocks, maybe Tokico's, but will try some of the above sugestion, specially the one related to those inexpensive small parts. Anyway, any other sugestion is welcome.

On the other hand, initially I thought the rear springs were longer than fronts, but after receiving the new ones, realize I was wrong: fronts are larger supposelly beacuse have to handle more force (weight,etc). Not sure if this is true for all but the best way to verify by the part number. At least with the RB's.

I did the same thing, i have mazdaspeed springs, shocks and put about 1" long of rubber hose on to the bottom spring coil.
When i install them, the rear springs dont' seem to sit in the perch very tight, and i did have a noise just like that from the rear. it's been over a year, noise hasn't come back.