So i installed some stance gr+ coils and a set of eibach front upper control arms tonight. The car is pretty low (tucking stock 18" tire) and im getting a bad clunk from up front when going over decent bumps. Im not positive what it is, but sounds like it could possibly be the uca's hitting the body or something? Is this a common problem, or is it a common problem for SOMETHING to be hitting when lowering past a certain point? Id like to get it taken care of tomorrow before i take the car in for alignment.

Cheers,
Kevin

 

Very common when you go to low. Just cause your coilovers still have more travel , doesn't mean your upper control arm has to extra room to move.

The stock 18 inch tire height will tuck roughly 1/2 inch before the control arm tops out in the wheel well. Easy way to test the limits of your up travel is remove your spring and jack the suspension up to the stops. I did this just to see the limits and see if i will rub.

 

got any pics of the car lowered

 

It could also be just a loose bolt, make sure each bolt is correctly tigthened

 

Or that when you are that low the upper control arm no room to go anywhere other then into the upper fender well.

 

+1

i have the same coilovers with the same clunking. if your car is pretty low, most likely the problem.

 

Well...its the control arms on the body. I hammered that pinchweld out of the way so its no longer hitting that. It does however, hit the inner fender still. I trimmed the control arms a little and maybe got like 1/8"-1/4" of clearance, but not much. Do people have this same problems with the stock uca's on really low cars? I come from the bagged vw/audi world and anyone that knows much about bagged audi's knows they have a similar problem when laying out. The upper control arm hits the inner fender. This is solved by cutting a nice little hole out to give the control arm somewhere to go. It seems in the z though it hits right around some plug welds around the tower so it might not be possible to do that on this car. Any other ideas that dont involve raising the car would be greatly appreciated.

And a pic for reference

 

is the sound very loud or is it just something you hear? and does it seem safe enough to continue to drive it like that?

 

me and superblack had this problem (upper A arm hitting the frame of the car), the lower you go the worse it gets. What i dont understand is how your getting it. Your car doesnt seem to be at the point where its that low to clunk, I was at your height once clunk free. If you only get it once in a while i guess but if it's that bad there might be something wrong.

anyway i drove around with the clunk for a few months, didnt really damage anything

 

Well what did you do to fix it? The car is at 24.75" fender to ground....idk if thats considered low or not but its tucking tire pretty good maybe the picture is giving off a different vibe. Whether or not though, there are marks on the inner fender (one on the pinch weld, and one on the body) with corresponding marks on the brand new arms so its hitting. I rechecked everything this morning and didnt find any loose bolts or anything of that matter.

Im not worried anything is going to be damaged, its just the control arm on the body, but its really annoying. Im getting the car aligned on tuesday and if no one has a good reccomendation before that, then the cutting may begin

 

Do you have adjustable endlinks?

 

No I don't. Do the sway bars also hit? I KNOW the control arms are hitting, but where should I look on the sway to check if it's hitting something?

 

well how bad is it? is it constantly clunking? when i had it, it only occured on major bumps/dips which rarely happens and that was about your height now. But when i slammed it (about an inch lower than where you are from the pics) i had the clunk all the time. how stiff did you set your coilovers at?

 

im 90% sure it's the upper A arm causing the clunk, we all have it (check the stretch tires aggressive thread). also make sure to remove that one bolt on your front fenders, it may also be hitting your tires on dips.

 

it happens on every decent sized bump/dip. I talked to "royal_t" and he said he cut out a hole in the top of the inner fender to allow them to move freely. Im waiting on him to send me a few pics and im gonna go ahead and do that. I mean, id like to lower it another 1/2" or so, but i want to take care of this problem first since its only going to get worse as i go lower. I guess you never did anything about it and just dealt with it?

 

I have the same problem, Eibach is actually the SPC A-Arm and I just talked to them last week. They do have a new design but it does not fix this problem. The two pictures are where my arm hits and Im pretty sure this is where his are hitting also. Im lowered 1.5" all around and get the clunk usually only on pot holes or raised road changes, unless Im quick enough to dodge them...lol. Good luck.. Im probably going with some other A-Arm mostly because SPC gives you less travel and even their TECH support acknowledges this.

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yes, exactly where mine hit.

 

what bolt are you taking about? and were is it located?

 

Oh and Toby-22 my coils are set at 10 all around. Tried stiffening it up to like 12 but it didnt do too much.

 

If you're lower than stock you're going to need some adjustable end links. I only have Eibach Pro-kit springs, and I had clunking from the sway up front. I'm no expert but I don't believe the sway bar is actually hitting anything. The end links should be vertical 90degrees, but lose that positioning when you drop the car. I'm sure an expert can better explain that's just my good luck