Question
Porsche 996 Carrera 2

engine 3.4l

year 1998

Hello,
I recently purchased from yourselves the sports suspension kit plus 2 front drop links. I have fitted these (6th August) and I’m pleased with them. I followed up with a full 4 wheel alignment. I’ve completed about 2400 miles since fitting.

However I hope you may be able to give me some advice re the following please. Before I fitted the new suspension kit I kept hearing a creaking coming from the front suspension. After replacing with the above kit the noise disappeared. Whilst I have been on holiday down to Goodwood this week the noise has returned with a vengeance.

I have narrowed it down to coming from the front left corner (N/S). The creak comes on when the suspension is in both bounce and rebound, and can even be brought on by pressing down on the wing on that side. The noise can be created by turning the steering to the left when stationary, but is virtually not there when turning to the right. Also whilst driving if you turn to the right, thereby loading up the front left hand corner, the noise is less than turning to the left and unloading the front left hand side.

Today I have disconnected the front drop links onto the anti roll bar and by pressing on the wing the noise is still there, therefore I believe that I can discount the anti roll bar as having a fault.

I checked all the bolts both on the chassis members, anti roll bars, suspension turret etc to ensure that they were still torqued to the correct settings and they were, therefore nothing had worked loose,

I then tried to squirt silicone onto the bushes, and onto the rubber parts at the top of the suspension strut. My dad reckoned this to be an old trick and I have reached the stage where I was willing to try anything. This has quietened things down but the noise is still there.

I appreciate that its difficult to give a full diagnosis via an email, but I thought if this was one of those common faults on a 996 you may be able to help by pointing me in the rough direction of what to check next, and what I may therefore need to purchase.

Any help or suggestions you are able to give would be most appreciated.

Thanks
Andrew

Answer

Dear Sir

The most common problem is the lower ball joint arms, these normally (always 9/10 cases) cause the creaking noise. The centre bush normally is the cause, We sell them every day and stock about 100pcs at any given time, there are 4 on all 996 models and Boxster 986.

I would suggest changing the lower arm either one side or both fronts to be on the safe side.

a link to the product

Click Here

Porsche 996/Boxster 986 Lower ball joint arm

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