Ok so here is the deal I have Tein Type Flex coilovers in my car and the whole summer had a persistant issue. Maybe you guys can point me in what direction I need to go in to fix the issue.
Springs creak and make squeeky noises ALOT while going slow it didnt settle out over the summer and I have tried to lube the contact points where the springs hit the mounts ect no diffrence.
When going over bumps or when there is suspension travel I hear all I can say it sounds like is a hissing sound on both the downstroke and upstroke of the dampner. No visble leaks on the pistons of the dampners or the coilover body. Almost makes me thing that I have them not properly setup.
Occasionaly hear pops from the front end when I hit a sudden rut in the road or when the car hits a hard bump.
Just getting the car ready for winter and I want to know what I may have done wrong. What could I do to make sure that they are properly installed on the car. The Tein manual honestly sucks IMO and its refrence points dont really seem to help me. These are my first experiance with coilovers so I am kinda walking in the dark on how to check whats up with them. Any help would be appreciated. If you need more info about the setup just ask.
i honestly didnt read your whole post but from the first few lines i think your problem is what i went through with my last car, not enough pre-load… u have to compress the spring or it will rotate and make noise between the perches.
Ok sounds good but that may be the problem how do I create or setup this preload on the system. Type flex dont have helpersprings so a little help. I am just not familar with putting these together.
ok picture the coilover… the spring is being held in place so its touching the pillowball mount at the top and the threaded perch at the bottom… its not tight, but its not able to move… now measure the distance between the top and bottom pieces holding the spring… tighten the bottom perch until the distance reduces by about an inch (ask jantos to be sure, i think its 21mm or so exactly)
that will pre-load the spring so like jantos said, there will be constant pressure on the spring. It wont rotate when you turn and it wont pop in and out of place when weight is distributed in hard cornering or over bumps at high speeds.
hope that made sense to you, good luck.
an inch is a hell of a lot of preload that will be really really stiff
just put like 10mm of preload on her and it’ll be nice
i.e. when you’re tightening the top perch you should go up 10mm from the time the collar starts to compress the spring.
then move up the locking perch and using hte two spanner wrenches lock them tight (try to lower the top perch wile trying to raise the bottom perch) this will put tension on the two collars and lock them in place disallowing htem from moving around.
now loosen your bottom lock collar and turn the top collar (the one closest to the spring) in the direction where it would have resistence against the lower locking collar to LOWER the suspension
to raise the suspension turn the lower locking collar in the direction so that it will put tension against the top collar (i.e try to make that collar go UP on the assembly)
this will turn the whole unit inside of the mount and thereby change the distance between the top of the strut and the suspension mount without affecting the suspension travel
you really need a diagram for this shit so ill do one up in photoshop
wow lol sorry I forgot about this thread for a little bit. Sasha your the man that diagram and explanation makes 100% sense to me now. Maybe this is worth a sticky in the tech section, I bet alot of guys dont understand preload.
I’m pretty sure the Type Flex are gas charged dampers, so you won’t see any signs of them being blown, other than not working.
I’ve heard from a number of different people the Flex line of coilovers are noisy, no matter what you do.
Tein has now redesigned the spring seat and spring seat lock for the Flex, so maybe there was something wrong with the original design?
I third (quadruple?) the notion setting preload gets a sticky of some kind. We’ve had people come into the shop with coilovers that are either just simply bolted right in, or were bought used - and blown - but still installed.
If the car is low and harsh, they must be working right?
