KW V2 impressions and settings

[Top40]

I also have the same exact problem on my AWD. The front clunking/clicking noise is coming from the right side only. I've had the front upper bushings replaced 6 times by the dealer. The new bushings work great and the noise goes away, but only for about a day. After a day the noise picks right up again. The only thing I can assume is that the KW V2 shock for AWD is constantly destroying the bushing. I've had the coilovers taken off 3 times now and sent back to KW for warranty inspection. All 3 times they insist there is nothing wrong with the coilover kit. I am totally fustrated with the service I get from KW. As far as the rear goes a buddy of mine had the same clunking noise from the right side. He informed me that KW made a new bushing for the rear shocks. KW told him that the original bushings were not made to handle the rough roads on the East Coast. They sent him a set of the new bushings and that fixed the rear clunk. I asked them to send me a set. When I replaced them they did indeed correct the rear clunk. The corrected issue with the rear noise makes me beleive the KW V2's are still going thru a test & trial period for the AWD. If you mailed in the warranty card I don't understand why they wouldn't contact the customer with problems. As far as the front noise goes no one has been able to figure it out. I've had everything checked several times under the car making sure nothing was loose which could cause the problem. I also had the tie rod ends replaced. I still have had no luck. Although it does not happen at all when I turn, but every bump I hit you can hear the noise. I also had the original springs & shocks reinstalled. The noise disappears when I do. That right there makes me certain it has something to do with either the actual KW shock or how they contact the upper bushing. I heard Pedders makes a replacement AWD front upper bushing for this problem. I'm trying to get more information on it. If anyone has any kind of suggestions or solution please post it.

[jaydee]

Originally Posted by Top40

I also have the same exact problem on my AWD. The front clunking/clicking noise is coming from the right side only. I've had the front upper bushings replaced 6 times by the dealer. The new bushings work great and the noise goes away, but only for about a day. After a day the noise picks right up again. The only thing I can assume is that the KW V2 shock for AWD is constantly destroying the bushing. I've had the coilovers taken off 3 times now and sent back to KW for warranty inspection. All 3 times they insist there is nothing wrong with the coilover kit. I am totally fustrated with the service I get from KW. As far as the rear goes a buddy of mine had the same clunking noise from the right side. He informed me that KW made a new bushing for the rear shocks. KW told him that the original bushings were not made to handle the rough roads on the East Coast. They sent him a set of the new bushings and that fixed the rear clunk. I asked them to send me a set. When I replaced them they did indeed correct the rear clunk. The corrected issue with the rear noise makes me beleive the KW V2's are still going thru a test & trial period for the AWD. If you mailed in the warranty card I don't understand why they wouldn't contact the customer with problems. As far as the front noise goes no one has been able to figure it out. I've had everything checked several times under the car making sure nothing was loose which could cause the problem. I also had the tie rod ends replaced. I still have had no luck. Although it does not happen at all when I turn, but every bump I hit you can hear the noise. I also had the original springs & shocks reinstalled. The noise disappears when I do. That right there makes me certain it has something to do with either the actual KW shock or how they contact the upper bushing. I heard Pedders makes a replacement AWD front upper bushing for this problem. I'm trying to get more information on it. If anyone has any kind of suggestions or solution please post it.

This just doesn't sound good at all considering I dropped a whole lot of change on the four shocks with installation costing extra. I don't remember filling out a warranty card .. Ugh ugh and double ugh! I'm standing by for what you find out .. with so many complaints, I wonder how KW can still be in this business.

Jay

[dms]

Originally Posted by Top40

I also have the same exact problem on my AWD. The front clunking/clicking noise is coming from the right side only. I've had the front upper bushings replaced 6 times by the dealer. The new bushings work great and the noise goes away, but only for about a day. After a day the noise picks right up again. The only thing I can assume is that the KW V2 shock for AWD is constantly destroying the bushing. I've had the coilovers taken off 3 times now and sent back to KW for warranty inspection. All 3 times they insist there is nothing wrong with the coilover kit. I am totally fustrated with the service I get from KW. As far as the rear goes a buddy of mine had the same clunking noise from the right side. He informed me that KW made a new bushing for the rear shocks. KW told him that the original bushings were not made to handle the rough roads on the East Coast. They sent him a set of the new bushings and that fixed the rear clunk. I asked them to send me a set. When I replaced them they did indeed correct the rear clunk. The corrected issue with the rear noise makes me beleive the KW V2's are still going thru a test & trial period for the AWD. If you mailed in the warranty card I don't understand why they wouldn't contact the customer with problems. As far as the front noise goes no one has been able to figure it out. I've had everything checked several times under the car making sure nothing was loose which could cause the problem. I also had the tie rod ends replaced. I still have had no luck. Although it does not happen at all when I turn, but every bump I hit you can hear the noise. I also had the original springs & shocks reinstalled. The noise disappears when I do. That right there makes me certain it has something to do with either the actual KW shock or how they contact the upper bushing. I heard Pedders makes a replacement AWD front upper bushing for this problem. I'm trying to get more information on it. If anyone has any kind of suggestions or solution please post it.

I will try and help you. I have to assume when you say the upper bushings you are talking about upper control arm bushings? As far as I know, Chrysler only services these bushes by replacing the entire control arm. I could be wrong, however. The OEM control arm bushes are pretty soft, but ar enot prone to any noises. We do have upper control arm bushes that are very stoutly, but best of all, they will make your LX fully alignable. But I do not think your upper control arm bushings are causing any noise, especially since they have been replaced 4 times.

there are lots of opportunitie for noises in the front end of the LX; front strut mount bushings, th end links, to brake pads, to loose ball joints and tie rod ends. And that is assuming everything is tight. The ball joint torque is critical on these vehicles and oftern challenging to get to torq

Here is the p.n for the upper control arm bushings and eccentrics
EP6570 LX Front Upper Control Arm Bush Adjustable Camber $273.93

Good luck on your KWs

mike
dms

[Tom@KW]

Good conversation, but I want to clear up some of the misinformation I see here. Hopefully the mods will allow me to do this as it is our product being discussed. If any of you have further questions, feel free to email or call us directly.

KW has found that a small percentage of our customers started running into the rear bushings being separated from the body of the damper. Oddly it always starts with the passenger side. Considering that the dampers are the same left to right, this lead us to believe it was not our bushings that were failing, but an unforeseen tolerance level we havent found in most examples of the car. To give you an idea of the percentage, we have sold several hundred of our V2s for the LX platform cars last year alone, and I have replaced a little under 30 bushings to date off the top of my head.

With all that said, there have been a large amount of our customers who found that they simply were not running the correct torque specifications in the rear, please check your install notes and your torque settings. If this does not correct the rear clunking noise, contact us directly with a copy of your original receipt, and a picture of the rear lowering bushing separated from the damper. We will be able to send you out a new bushing design that should correct the issue. Note that any new systems should not run into this issue as the new bushing solution was then used as a running change in our V2 kits.

As for the noise at the front of the vehicle I am looking into this more to see if we can find a solution or a cause of the problem. I have had 3 people in the last few months contact us about this noise issue, and it was the first time we had ever heard of it. The first customer replaced his upper spring seats, and this corrected his issue. The second had his over tourqed by almost tripple the amount in our install notes. I have never heard back from the customer after this. And the last gentlemen I have just heard back from today. We are trying to help him track down the source of the noise.

My R&D staff feel that this could be the result of a worn control arm bushing, or the sway bar end links. This makes sense, but we would like to know that replacing these items is correcting this noise issue. We don’t have any evidence currently that it is the damper. Again, if you have replaced your control arm bushings and your sway bar end links, and are still having this noise in the front end, please contact us directly!

If you have any other questions, please let us know by contacting us directly. Unfortunately I cannot spend much time searching forums, and so I am unable to post direct answers here. Please either email or call us with any further questions!

Hopefully this helps some of you out there!

[Meister]

Welcome, Tom. It's always good to have a factory rep stop by, especially so when they can clear up a major mystery while they're at it.

It's also good to see a manufacturer step up and correct design deficiencies when they occur, rather than going into denial mode and stonewalling. So kudos to you, Tom, and the company you so ably represent for making good here.

And a big thank you to Pedders at the same time, as you've come up with bushes (bushings to most of us yanks) which greatly improve upon the performance of whose-ever product is benefiting from the increased performance your bushes bring.

And I must note from personal experience, that Pedders' command of the performance equation doesn't stop with their bushes. Their Pedders-brand shocks & struts are amazingly capable components themselves. That's all I intend to say on that topic in this thread, but if anyone has pertinent questions in that regard you may certainly feel free to PM me.

[jaydee]

Originally Posted by Meister

Welcome, Tom. It's always good to have a factory rep stop by, especially so when they can clear up a major mystery while they're at it.

It's also good to see a manufacturer step up and correct design deficiencies when they occur, rather than going into denial mode and stonewalling. So kudos to you, Tom, and the company you so ably represent for making good here.

And a big thank you to Pedders at the same time, as you've come up with bushes (bushings to most of us yanks) which greatly improve upon the performance of whose-ever product is benefiting from the increased performance your bushes bring.

And I must note from personal experience, that Pedders' command of the performance equation doesn't stop with their bushes. Their Pedders-brand shocks & struts are amazingly capable components themselves. That's all I intend to say on that topic in this thread, but if anyone has pertinent questions in that regard you may certainly feel free to PM me.

Here is a verabtim quote of the response I got from KW's Tom Edge. I expected them, at the very least, to overnight the parts while my car was with the dealership with the shocks taken off, but it looks like I'll have to spend some more in time and money an inconvenience, getting the shocks back on so I can make it to a scheduled paid training in Washington DC, and then spend some more time and money taking it back to the dealership after these parts come in. Perhaps I should rent a car for the weekend. The following is the correspondence I have received- I have neither threatened nor slandered them, but this is what he implies in his response to my saying that I was going to relate my experience to the members of this forum. I expected better from a dealer of parts that I spend over 2000$ to have fitted onto my car, that fails.

Jay


*********************************************


Jay



I am sorry you feel that way. All KW Warranties are processed in the same way, your case is treated no differently. I am sorry you have spent so much in looking for an answer to the problem, however once KW was involved, the problem was diagnosed and solved in a single phone call with the dealership. I would consider that says that we got it to pretty quickly.


The problem you have experienced is one that we have run into in on approximately 30 of the literally hundreds of these kits sold. As stated before, our engineers have developed a new solution for cars that had a different tolerance than anything we had seen before. Please remember that this kit was co developed with Chrysler/Mopar directly using their engineering data. Yours is apparently one of these cars. Blaming that on KW is your prerogative, but simply isn’t the case. Even so, we still have come up with a solution that we send out quite readily to anyone who needs it, without charge. This new bushing is also used on all kits produced for some time now, meaning any kit purchased in about the last year should not have this problem even if the car is one of the few that were outside the range we saw during our development.

As for warranty, the way we do our warranty is standard in the automotive industry, and in many cases much more consumer focused than most. Regardless, there are no automotive companies that we have encountered or are aware of that will cover any labor charges to correct any problems. Most companies will tell you the product MUST come back to them for servicing. In this situation, we send out the bushings to minimize the impact on the end user, in this case you. By getting you out the bushings as quickly as possible, we expected them to arrive on Friday, unfortunately it doesn’t look as though this will happen. Although I can understand that this noise is annoying, it certainly does not create any safety or performance issues, and if installed correctly, you should have no issue driving the car until the bushings arrive.


In short, I am sorry you feel the way you do, despite KW’s efforts that were performed in a timely manner to get you taken care of.


I will note that neither myself personally nor any automotive company in general take very well to being threatened by verbal or written slander on line. Please ensure that anything you may say or post online or otherwise is accurate and factual.


Tom Edge

Brand Manager

[dms]

Originally Posted by Tom@KW

Good conversation, but I want to clear up some of the misinformation I see here. Hopefully the mods will allow me to do this as it is our product being discussed. If any of you have further questions, feel free to email or call us directly.

KW has found that a small percentage of our customers started running into the rear bushings being separated from the body of the damper. Oddly it always starts with the passenger side. Considering that the dampers are the same left to right, this lead us to believe it was not our bushings that were failing, but an unforeseen tolerance level we havent found in most examples of the car. To give you an idea of the percentage, we have sold several hundred of our V2s for the LX platform cars last year alone, and I have replaced a little under 30 bushings to date off the top of my head.

With all that said, there have been a large amount of our customers who found that they simply were not running the correct torque specifications in the rear, please check your install notes and your torque settings. If this does not correct the rear clunking noise, contact us directly with a copy of your original receipt, and a picture of the rear lowering bushing separated from the damper. We will be able to send you out a new bushing design that should correct the issue. Note that any new systems should not run into this issue as the new bushing solution was then used as a running change in our V2 kits.

As for the noise at the front of the vehicle I am looking into this more to see if we can find a solution or a cause of the problem. I have had 3 people in the last few months contact us about this noise issue, and it was the first time we had ever heard of it. The first customer replaced his upper spring seats, and this corrected his issue. The second had his over tourqed by almost tripple the amount in our install notes. I have never heard back from the customer after this. And the last gentlemen I have just heard back from today. We are trying to help him track down the source of the noise.

My R&D staff feel that this could be the result of a worn control arm bushing, or the sway bar end links. This makes sense, but we would like to know that replacing these items is correcting this noise issue. We don’t have any evidence currently that it is the damper. Again, if you have replaced your control arm bushings and your sway bar end links, and are still having this noise in the front end, please contact us directly!

If you have any other questions, please let us know by contacting us directly. Unfortunately I cannot spend much time searching forums, and so I am unable to post direct answers here. Please either email or call us with any further questions!

Hopefully this helps some of you out there!

Hi Tom,

To assist you, I can tell you that the lower control arm bushing on the LX is pretty stoutly. We do replace them as part of our TrackII, but as of yet, have mot seen one go bad yet. Sway bar end links go bad like any vehicle. But the rears are better than the fronts, and it is the fronts that have the major issue.

So in terms of your bushing wear, you need to look elsewheres because it is not a result of a OEM lower control arm bushing

take care
mike
dms

[joey]

Jaydee,

Is the noise in this video the same as yours?

YouTube - Chrysler 300c front suspension popping/clunking noise

My noise is coming from the left front.

[jaydee]

Originally Posted by joey

Jaydee,

Is the noise in this video the same as yours?

YouTube - Chrysler 300c front suspension popping/clunking noise

My noise is coming from the left front.

Joey, the quality of the sound on the video is high pitched, but the character *seems* the same- I get a sequence of "knocking" sounds where yours sounds like single knocks. Apparently, the test is to remove the shock from the lower support, push the bushing to see if it is loose. My rear bushing looked good on eyeballing it, but yielded to the push test. The bushings have been delivered (at last!) and I will be taking my car in tomorrow to have them installed- Hopefully, I don't have to deal with this issue again, but I'm not holding my breath!

Jay

[joey]

Not sure if you saw my thread, but I found the fix to my popping.
The upper two spring coils were/are torquing/banging on each other.
Inserting rubber between the two springs stopped the noise.