oh....suspension noises....
 

so...

replaced all front suspension components (ball joints, both control arms, sway bar links, upper strut mounts). Everything feels much better, and my shimmy is gone.

But. I still have a very annoying rattle/clunk/thunk under strut compression. Seems to come more from the left hand side than the right, but i always set on the left ;-)

I can sometimes feel it through the steering wheel, othertimes not. The only real things left to replace are the struts themselves, or the tie rod ends. I havent' noticed any play in the tie-rod ends.

ideas? advice?

Check to see if your bolts are not loose on the swaybar bushing brackets.

My brother also replaced bothside of his rubber mount (31126769715) for tension struct @ 110K miles. The car now feels like new car again.

Could be your strut top mount. Here is a post of my issue and a pic of the part I am referring too.

http://www.xoutpost.com/bmw-sav-foru...rut-mount.html

Here is a link to real oem site and its part #1

RealOEM.com BMW E53 X5 4.4i GUIDE SUPPORT/SPRING PAD/ATTACHING PARTS

Redline, yeah. I thought initially it was the top strut mount as well. I replaced part #6 in the diagram, but couldnt' see any rubber or bearing part in part #1 that would disintegrate and make a noise. Maybe I missed something. It *sounds* like a bad strut mount to me.

I'll eventually get it sorted out. Anyone else replace the entire front end at 75K miles? It was showing signs of wear at 60K, and at 70K made enough noise that you went crazy...

Cant' really complain. It's the first real repair I've had not under warranty.

What I like to do with most of my vehicles is just replace the whole front suspension (at least all of the normal replacement parts) when they start wearing. That way you don't have to worry about it for another 80k miles as it is all new again.

FWIW I have a creaking in my front end coming from inside the left front strut... it comes and goes but is really annoying when it happens. Sometime in the nearish future I plan on changing my struts and mounts with OEM. (keeping the dinan camber plates naturally :D)