Suspenion help

Hey guys, name's AliasJerk, I hail from the Contour.org (CEG) forums, as a fellow motoring enthusiast.

However, I have a friend I work with that has an '03 Protege5 (85K miles) that has a knocking sound coming from the suspension. He informed me that about a year ago they had replaced the front sway bar (or possibly endlink? He wasnt entirely sure) and the same sound came back.

Heres how I can describe the sound, when ever you go over any sort of uneven road there is a knocking noise coming from the driver side, in my experience in car suspensions, I think it is the strut or strut mount, because its not just a quick rattle or knock, it sounds almost like its "bouncing" initially I wanted to say his sway bar endlink was bad.

Another thing I noticed I pushed down on the car's suspension and you could kinda hear the same noise when you would do the "bounce" test on the suspension, just wasnt as noticeable. Along with doing that test, the car took like 2-3 rebounds before the suspension would settle again. I told him he probably needs new front struts and mounts, because you are supposed to replace both fronts and both rears at the same time.

The car rides absolutely fine, and it seems strange to me that after 85K miles the struts about be THAT bad, unless there is something about the protege5 I didnt know. I told him I would search the internet and get back to him, but he wants me to help him fix it, so first step is finding out whats wrong, 2nd step is finding out how difficult it is to swap out.

I've done Contour SVT suspensions, and those are a PITA, so there certainly cant be anything worse then that.

Thanks in advance guys.

Just a quick check, make sure the rubber piece is between the spring and the perch. This can cause a little of that burping/knocking sound. I am not convinced this is your problem, but I would check it seeing as it takes 2 mins.

The endlinks are not that robust - could another fail? Not impossible. Check spring perches - but - yeah after 60K i expect to change struts on these cars. The endlinks sometimes have to be cut off and replaced to rreplace the struts - so either way it will get fixed...

P-Funk! said:

The endlinks are not that robust - could another fail? Not impossible. Check spring perches - but - yeah after 60K i expect to change struts on these cars. The endlinks sometimes have to be cut off and replaced to rreplace the struts - so either way it will get fixed...

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Kinda what I figured, I did my 98 Corolla suspension a couple of years ago with Tein Springs and Tokiko (SP?) struts, and the endlinks were the same way, I ended up wrecking two of the rears and had to replace them anyways.

He isnt into modifying cars or anything, where is the most economical place to go to find good OEM struts?

Definitely a bad damper/shock absorber. The dampers usually, as the name suggests, dampens the movement of the springs. Without the damper there to resist the compression of the spring, something is hitting the suspension mount. That's probably the knocking sound you hear. You should normally only get one bounce when you do the "bounce" test because the damper resists oscillation in the spring. The fact that you get multiple bounces is pretty definitive evidence that the damper is bad.

The car rides fine because you're probably on smooth road most of the time with just a few bumps. It'll be a different story on a bumpy back road. I'm also going to guess that only the front driver side damper is actually bad.

The spring is probably fine. See if you can just swap out the bad damper. Then again, this is a great excuse for a suspension upgrade.

Good luck!

I think everything's covered so far. I have bad fronts and I hear a slight clunk sometimes. It was bad over a rough highway the other day, but feels "fine" around town.

I decided to take on the project for him, is there a how-to anywhere, or does anybody have any pics of the 03' front Protege5 suspension setup, so I can study it before I take on the project?