Wil

got my 1.8tqm lowered with bilstein/neuspeeds a couple of weeks ago and have been loving it. then just this past weekend i took it on a road trip to nyc. the past few days i've had a chirping/squealing sound coming from the rear and the sound seems to shift left and right. it is bugging the hell outta me. it doesn't make the sound on harsh bumps but rather light ones. the sound has stopped and come back three times. i'm curious as to what this is. i've never heard it before this trip. could it be the extreme weather doing something to the tires/suspension components. its been well over 100 the past few days. does anyone know a dealer in D.C. metro area who won't deny me warranty coverage on the other suspension components due to the new shocks and springs? i've searched the archives and have found that people with the stock springs/shocks has had this problem as well. no solution though.<p>its my first problem and it sucks! so far i have 4k miles if that helps in the diagnosis.<p>thanks<br>-Wil

Jim Murphy

Go to a parking lot or somewhere where you can drive slowly over a few surface irregularities to make sure you can duplicate the noise at will. Then when driving over these bumps, lightly press the brake and see if the noise stops. You can also try jacking up the car and hitting the tire with a rubber mallet to mimic hitting road bumps (make sure the car is held up solidly!). This may allow you to better hear exactly where the noise is coming from. My noises also seemed to come from different corners - it seems very hard to track down under-carriage noises while driving the car <p>This is the problem I had on my 97 (and it has just made a comeback). I found that when driving over small road irregularities (manhole covers, road cracks, etc.) I could hear chirping sounds when the windows were down. One dealer claimed they fixed it but in about 2 weeks it was back. My regular dealer then looked at it at much later date and by that time I had heard of the dreaded multilink suspension problems and was concerned that that was the problem. My dealer was well aware of the suspension issues and looked into the problem. They found the multilink was fine but that the brake pads were not seated up against the calipers. They could actually slide a shim between the pad and caliper. Hitting the tire with a rubber mallet would cause a chirp and the noise would subsist when the shim was in place. They removed the pads and applied anti-squeal compound and all the noises stopped. In looking back at the first dealer's report, they too wrote down that they reapplied anti-squeal to the pads. (their fix only lasted 2 weeks, long story on this dealer)<p>That last fix was almost a year ago. Now, just last week, I had all my windows down and I heard the damn noise again. I will be looking at my car this weekend to track down the root of the noise and see if it is the pads again.<p>I had this theory and I may be totally off-base in my thinking but here goes: There were a few roads I used to travel in which the intersections were inundated with those nasty pavement ripples caused by heavy trucks. When coming to a stop at these intersections, my ABS would always kick in as the wheels stuttered across the ripples (nasty feeling). I once thought that maybe the physics involved with the pads as ABS kicks in was causing them to eventually break their seating from the anti-squeal compound thus allowing them to once again bang the calipers and chirp on the small bumps. Especially so since this was a daily event and I had no success in avoiding the ABS kick-ins no matter how I approached the intersection.<p>Anyways, good luck on your problem and if you do find out anything let me know as it may give me some different avenues of attack