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Noise when turning the steering wheel
My youngest daughter has a 2002 Chrysler Town and Country AWD mini van. We bought it with 100,000 miles on it and it made lots of noise over bumps and turning. I joined a Chrysler forum for information and I replaced the worn out sway bar links first thing. These fail on our cars and many other with similar designed front suspension. This fixed one of noises that occured at low speed entering driveways. The car make terrible noises when stopped and turning the steering wheel. The Chrysler forum talked about sway bar mounting bushings causing noises on this series mini van. Moog makes problem solver bushing kits so my van is not the only one doing this. The bushings made no change in the remaining noises. Since I don’t drive this car except when I work on it the noises don’t bother me. More research finds that Chrysler in their infinite wisdom uses cheap bearings in the top of their strut mounts. The small balls pound into the races and take a set so when you turn the steering wheel the little balls hop to the next dent. Moog makes replacement top plates that come with new bearings. This is the first time that I have driven this van and had it quiet. I suspect our cars may also have similar issues even though my 200,000 mile L series cars are all quiet. |
We've got a '97 that occasionally makes a noise kind of like a fog horn when turning the wheel at parking lot speeds. To be clear, this is not when going lock to lock but somewhere in the middle of the range.
Never figured it out and have too many more serious issues to take time to hunt down the cause. |
That's a pretty common issue on them, Andy. Being a Mopar man at heart, it really pisses me off to see the lack of quality of parts they put in them nowadays. If you want a LOT of info and help with her T&C, you should join Allpar. Great bunch of guys there. I've been a member for over 15 years.
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Thanks Rube I will check them out. |
I've only done a strut swap once on each of my s cars, as ancient as they are. They are due again and I hope the OEM upper front mounts are available for less than the value of the car.
The bearings seem to last quite a while as long as you don't disturb them. Meaning it's considered very lucky if the bearing ring doesn't split open and puke ball bearings all over your garage floor if you try to swap it somewhere else So use the mount and bearing together until they fail and if the bearing is worn or tight at swap time just get new OEM bearings. Remove the old one over a trash can I will say that I have one strut which refuses to rotate at the bearings under spring tension, but is fine without the tension. It's like something has been compressed over time such that the heads of the "embedded bolts" that mount up through the frame don't have enough clearance to let the fasteners for the piece that holds the upper rubber to the spring pass by during rotation. The result is that the spring moves with the strut and makes a rubber foghorn sound like you describe, Janmar. It's the spring dragging against the rubber as you turn the wheel at slow speed. |
Thanks Derf!
I hadn't thought of that possibility. Quite likely too since the front suspension components on this vehicle came from 3 different vehicles at the local pick-n-save. |
I'll let you know if I find a way to fix it. It seems like every now and then the noise disappears for a few weeks, then it's back.
Like you said not impt enough to worry about. It was like that when my last set of new tires went on the car and I kept it in alignment until only recently. Hadn't even been driving it much but it was a hot mess alignment wise. I didn't think these cars were heavy enough to have the static weight of the car on the springs be an issue. though I guess the spring tension against the mounts might have an effect if it is just sitting there and is pushing against a compressible component. Enough speculation for now |
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