After I installed H&R lowering springs on my 2008 MCS I noticed a clunking noise in the front passenger side. It would happen on even a small bump in the road. I pulled off the wheel, inspected it, tightened up everything, put it back together again and now it sounds even worse. It makes me feel like my awesome cooper is now shiznit.

Now it is making a popping noise every time I turn left or right. I inspected the cv joint and it looks fine and it is not really a bad cv joint kind of sound. It is this one pop noise as if the spring is shifting and then popping back into place. I then extra torqued down the top nut while holding the strut with an allen key and it did not change anything. It almost seems the more I tighten stuff the worse it gets?

Is my strut bad? Is my sway bar clanking on something? Everything else is stock.
HELP!

 

I'm not to familiar with the strut design and spring perch on this car, popping sounds are usually associated with spring binding. The More you are tightening things the more spring binding you induce. I'm on my phone at the moment so I can't really search. I would go look for a stock suspension picture and compare it to your work. I remember I did a spring install for my brother on his 08 M3. I put one of the spring perches on upside down which prevented the spring from spinning when the wheel was turned.

 

did you replace the swaybar endlinks when you did the spring install? Depending on how much the car was lowered you can end up with the swaybar hitting the control arm over bumps. Are your endlinks tightened down properly? I had an intermittent clunk from the passenger side recently so I re-torqued the endlinks and it went away.

 

I'm going to pull it apart again and triple check. It really does sound like spring binding but when I removed it recently , it was mounted properly and the bearings that help it to turn with the wheels are in good shape.

I still have factory endlinks. I broke the drivers side endlink during the installation and replaced it immediately. Could the endlinks make this popping sound? I would think the would break before taking all the pressure. I can feel the pop in the steering wheel sometimes.

 

I had the same problem with my Megan Racing coil overs at the Dragon just after I put them on. It was two things...

First, the pre-load needed to be set again because they wore-in a little so that need adjustment. That was the clunking sound when going over bumps.

Then the clicking sound was the spring binding. You could see it happen if someone would turn the wheel and I was looking behind the tire. I contacted Megan Racing and they provided a diagram to me showing that there's not many moving parts and that all I had to do was disassemble the coil-over, which wasn't that hard, grease the plate that the spring sat on, and put it back together.

Ok, I'm looking for an easier way so instead of taking off the coil over, I bought some spray lithium grease, jacked up the car, sprayed it at the base and top of the spring (using the little stick nozzle so I could get it in between the spring and the plate) and then worked the spring around a few times hitting it again with the spray grease. Worked like a charm!

 

The endlinks may not be broken but if they're not tightened down properly they can make a pop/clunk noise

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OK. So when I turn the wheels sitting still there is no pop. When I am driving about 20-50mph and i swerve left then to right and pressure is applied there is a single popping noise . This noise happens when I swerve to the right and then again when I swerve to the left.

I plan on taking off the right side endlink to see if the noise is still happening.

 

Problem solved. It was the endlink on the passenger side making all the noise. Apparently the bolt had tricked me into thinking it was tightened all the way, but with some air gun torque it overcame what must have been bad thread on the endlink.

I should have known after reading all the other threads on similar issues it is usually always either the nut loose on the top of the strut or the endlinks not tightened down all the way.

THANKS EVERYBODY.