Scottish Elises

Hi guys,
At the Ingliston sprint today, my VX developed a very nasty sounding clunk from the rear when spinning up the wheels and under hard acceleration.
Hard to pinpoint but my immediate reaction was driveshaft or CV joint. However, there was no apparent play in the driveshafts and jacking the car up and rotating the wheels by hand showed them to be turining smoothly (I got a couple of mechanicallly minded guys to double check all this).

The other thing worth noting is that the car does clunk a bit when reversing and sometimes at low speed - again from the rear. This got me thinking that it might be suspension related. Could this be a sympton of iminent toe-link failure?

Any ideas on how to track down this issue? I need to get the car fixed for Kames on 22 May and I'm going on holiday for a week so I need to get it sorted in the next 2 weeks.

When mine clunked (when warm) it was a siezed inboard toe link.

I am a mechanical idiot though.

Could be engine mounts but thats more a mettalic scream than a clunk.

Lower ball joints worth a look I would think.

I would have said engine mounts or broken air box mounting.

The clunking I had, that was how you described it, was a seized uniball toe-link.

Advice I was given was to hold the rear to link bars and get someone to bounce on the suspension. If you feel a knocking/clunking its a toe link. The sound I had really didn't sound like it would be something like that, but it was.

Yup.... I had the knocking sound. Only seems to appear when the car has wormed up a bit?

Was the toe link/lower ball joint.

PM dannynewport on vx220.org.uk who can get them cheap for you. He runs a Motor factor or something.


cheers
Bob

Ok. I felt it was suspension related but I took my mechanic mate out in it today and 'demonstrated' the problem. It's only really noticeable on hard acceleration (like when I spin the wheels) and its a regular 'dunk, dunk, dunk'. His initial reaction was engine mounts but we tested that by trying to pull away with the handbrake on and the engine wasn't moving much at all.

Something we did notice was that when you push the car by hand backwards, you can hear a clicking as if something is sticking and then releasing (like for example a toe-link joint).

Anyway, I've left the car with him to see if he can pinpoint it.

Bob - thanks for the contact on .org - I'll PM him and see what deal he can do. I'll probably just buy a bundle of them and change them every 6 months.

Scotsdave wrote:I would have said engine mounts or broken air box mounting.

Car has an aftermarket air filter - pipercross or something so the OEM airbox ain't there. Noise 'seems' to come from drivers side.