Hi folks, my gen 1 has a clunk that seems like it would be related to play in the steering system. It's really only noticeable with the car at rest when the wheel is rocked back and forth. A friend and I tried to locate it with a stethoscope and he thought it was coming from the steering gear box. I wasn't so certain but I think it is inboard rather than out by the wheels and not coming from the cabin. I couldn't detect any play in the ball joints, tie rods, or sway bar links. On the other hand, rocking the steering wheel and watching the front wheel there doesn't seem to be any play I can detect visually. By feel it seems like about 1cm near the outside of the steering wheel, but the repair manual says up to 3cm of play there is allowable. Any tips for identifying this noise?
I don't know if this will help, but: it's relatively easy to disconnect the top end of both sway bar links, putting the sway bar out of action, and then testing it, WHILE PARKED, ONLY. The reason for doing it while parked is that with both links disconnected, the sway bar falls down onto the rest of the suspension, so you can't drive it that way. You can drive it with one sway bar link disconnected, so the other one holds the sway bar up. I have done this to diagnose a problem with the sway bar links. With the front wheels off, you can also inspect the rubber bushings for the sway bar that go on the subframe. I don't know if you can swap them from there, but you can look at both of them. Also, you said it wasn't in the cabin, but there are a couple of U-joints in the steering shaft that are inside the cabin. I think you can see at least one of them by kneeling outside the car and looking up over the pedals. It might be worth putting your eyeballs and/or fingers on them - if nothing else you can rule them out for sure.
I think at this point I'm pretty confident it's not related to the sway bar, but maybe for good measure I'll get the car on the lift and watch the bar while jiggling the wheel to confirm it's not what's clanking. I figure the bushings would have to be completely gone in order for that theory to make sense. I was just taking a closer look in the cabin. I pulled off all of the trim and such so I had access to both of those U-joints. It's hard to tell by ear where the clank is coming from, but I did a visual test. I rocked the steering wheel as finely as I could while still being able to see the shaft turn, and confirmed that the same tiny rotation was visible in all three of the shaft segments. I think this implicates the rack itself, and my decision is going to be whether I think I could address the issue by opening up the rack and tightening the nuts on the pinion shaft. I'm pretty skeptical about that approach because of safety recall B0G. According to ChapmanF this repair campaign involved irreversibly damaging the threads of the pinion shaft, so if this service had been done on the rack in my car it might mean trying to adjust the nuts would render the rack unusable. The overall intention is clearly not for these to be serviceable. I think I can still find new racks for sale online. Maybe I'll get a replacement one in hand and then just see what I find cracking open the rack. Worst case I just pop the replacement in.
