Scraping sound when not scraping

JARblue

It looks like his Hotchkis bushings were the culprit. Here is his response when I asked him if they fixed his problem.

You can see the grooves in the middle photo in Rusty's post. Here is a another pic:

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Tigger

Sorry guys for leaving you hanging as I rarely check into these threads anymore. If ever. JAR was kinda enough to uodate this for me.

And to re-assure everyone, if you have those older style bushings you may want to contact Hotchkis for the updated parts so when you wind up needing to tear them off again for greasing you can just swap in the new, smooth sided bushings. Should work a little better. Jwick also recommends wrapping Teflon tape around the bar first and then greasing. If using teflon, you may not need grease. I can't say for certain either way. Certain greases/oils may contain polyalfaolefin which will cause Teflon to disintegrate. Just use your best judgement and common sense. Just try not to shred your bushings. Mine are showing signs of needing replacement but they'lol been on there nearly 37,000 miles.

Hope this helps out!

Trips

I wanted to share my experience with the same noise scraping noise albeit mine was more pronounced as the temps would drops and what I found this weekend will make some sense.

I've had this on and off annoying scraping noise for a couple of years :| I could never figure it out blaming tire scrape on the fender liners or the plastic rivets that hold the wheel liner were not holding it in place thinking they moved to cause the scrape sound.

I lifted the front end up and decided to take a close look at the swaybar bushings to see that maybe just maybe it would be from there

I took them out and found them dry to the bone and thought hum thats what more than likely causing the scraping sound since the plastic bushing was making direct contact or metal in my case to swaybar.

I removed and cleaned the bushing and braket and apllied plenty of grease to the inside of the bushings and reinstalled.

It was 55º this morning coming to work and where I would normally hear the scraping sound along the drive there was NO MORE scraping sounds coming from the front end.

I highly recommend everyone who has encountered this particular sound to just make sure that the front swaybar is greased even after a year of use.

Thats all for now carry on

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Trips

Thanks Tigger for the thread.

This is what made me finally look at the bushings since Im the Hotchkis also

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Jordo!

Check the the brakes -- I seem to recall that there is a thin metal dust/heat shield (?) that can scrape the caliper as the wheel rotates and needs to be adjusted like a mm or so to avoid light contact.

Another possibility is the sliding pins for the calipers

I think there were TSB's for the G37 on these issue, and I had the first one on my Z.

Finally, there could be a small pebble trapped in the caliper that is scraping.

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Enjoy it. Destroy it.

Tigger

I've gotten that several times with a damn pebble. A short, quick acceleration usually takes care of that.

Oh. And if you hit a deep puddle of water at speed, there is a chance you could bend the shield underr the driveshaft causing it to make contact and it is more pronounced when engine braking. You'll have to bend the shield back. Happened to me last spring. But, that's actually scraping I suppose. Not sure how many people have ever dealt with that. I might be the only one. But it sounds a lot like a rotor/wheel issue. Kinda scary.

markesc

I have the squishy sound coming from the front drivers side strut in the mornings going over the last speed bump leaving my place. The approach is with the wheel going straight perfectly, and only the front drivers side tire goes over it (the right side has enough room to avoid the speed bump).

Now strangely: If both tires go over the speed bump at the same time, no noise.

It doesn't really bother me, but I'm thinking it's going to get worse/sign of things to come.

Is there a stupid donut thing above spring/perch that needs replacing? I'd like to avoid going to the aftermarket nightmare of trying to find new springs or blowing thousands on KW's...

Other than that, this car has been a HUGE step up from the POS tin can on wheels chassis 07 wrx I once had. Maybe it lacks a bit in the all out excitement factor and low end tq, but it's been a stress free/fun car to own for the daily commute...and, there are not ten million Z's in the Portland area...I use my "sick days" now when it snows... so no AWD needed.

tnav

I take it the issue was fixed and the noise completely went away?

Trips

Yes,

It does seems that the Hotchkis bushing need to be greased periodically

So they don't go dry, and develop the plastic scraping sounds from the front end.

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axmea?

Thanks for this post Tigger and everyone's response. This pretty much confirmed my suspicion about the need to grease up the bushings. I have a similar issue and is more pronounced when cold as Trips mentioned. Strange how I hear it in the morning and never on my way home.

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Tigger

Well I'm glad this has at least helped out a few!