Insane knocking in front
 

I've got a crazy knocking in my front suspension that has successfully driven me crazy.

I now realize it first started showing signs around 10,000 miles ago, at 44k.
At that time, when braking hard, there was a very subtle knocking from the front. It seemed to me like I had a warped rotor.

At that time, it was intermittent, so I felt my rotors were not actually warped and didn't think much of it.

A bit later, the car starts developing a very sharp pitched knocking in the front left strut tower area when I hit a sharp bump or pothole.

I jacked it up, yanked on a bunch of stuff. Couldn't find anything.

Keep driving it, noise gets slowly worse.

Jack it up again, look more thoroughly. Even get a pry bar out to lever up against the bottom of my tires to try to check for ball joint play.
Doing 6/12 test, 3/9 test. Yanking on everything. Cannot find anything suspect.
I tried using the pry bar to lever against different suspension arms in any way I could. I couldn't find anything odd.

Keeps getting worse. At this point, it's just knocking around all the time, and is shuddering aggressively/concerningly under moderate braking.

Replace front sway bar and put on new end links.
No change.
Replace factory struts with Tein coilovers.
No change, despite finding noticeable play in the strut tower bearing (which I really thought was my "a-ha!" moment :sigh: ).
I even unhooked my sway bar entirely and drove it shortly. No change.

At this point, it's gotten so bad, it shudders heavily even under gentle braking. Just the noise, not the car shaking.

It sounds like my steering column is loose. Usually, I would heavily suspect the steering rack by now, but the car still steers and handles tightly.

Any ideas?

Did you check your front brake caliper mounting bolts?

Could it be the EPS coupler noise others have had?

If problem is under braking, naive question - have you checked everything brakes related?

Do you have an aftermarket lockdown kit for the steering rack?

What is this ESP coupler?

It is not exclusive to braking. Braking is just an event that causes it to knock around.
But I haven't checked my brakes specifically. I'll go ahead and do that today.

Everything is stock on the steering rack.
I was under it last night yanking around on the rack, tie rods, steering shaft (both in the driver footwell and under the car), nothing.

Likely this as @soundman98 said then.

https://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=133606

WOW...
That thread was amazing. Almost certain that's what it is now.
Thanks so much. Gonna go tear my car apart and let you know what I find

I don't know why they use a Hyundai coupler in the fix rather than a Subaru part. It's not like Hyundai doesn't have issues with their EPS couplers breaking down too.

Maybe subaru doesn't list one separately for brz w/o whole EPS assembly, just like toyota didn't for gt86/fr-s. (thread lists also very similar part by toyota, that doesn't require trimming unlike huyndai's, but IIRC it was found from parts listed for corolla, not for gt86/fr-s). As for why hyundie's .. probably that's what thread creator had found quickest/easiest by whatever means (probably googling) from similar parts at time when he was doing that mod. Only later on extra nfo on toyota/corolla part was added in.
Obviously that all is revelant IF your issue is this. From initial post with description how issue started, i'm not yet 100% convinced.

The Hyundai coupler is way beefier. You can see the OEM Toyota coupler has different colored layers (black, then green, then black again). These different layers actually move independently of each other, almost like a plant or something.

I, too, was curious how Hyundai popped up in 'How to Fix' thread lol

Keeping this i the back of mind. :thanks:

Any updates OP?