suspension rattle S70 T5

[drkaeppel]

Ouch. I'll probably end up taking it in then. I don't have spring compressors, nor do I know anything about suspension. The car only has 79,000 miles on it, so the struts are actually still feeling pretty good. It's a cushy ride, but this rattle has been persisting for a few weeks now. Seems to be getting steadily louder. Thanks for the input.

[Red-Arrow]

It really does sound like the spring seats are shot. Replace both front ones at the same time.

I have a metal rattle from the rear end and I have check everything on a ramp and all the bushings are tight. I can only get the rattle when I kick the tire side wall hard towards the rear and when the tire is off the ground.

[jblackburn]

This was my first attempt at suspension work on one of my cars, and I'll say it went pretty smoothly for having no idea what I was doing. I'm no longer intimidated by removing the whole strut assembly, although some other parts of the suspension down there can be a royal pain in the rear. I was done with it in under two hours - the worst part was the old, rusty bolts and trying to find a way to keep the broken spring seat still while I cracked the top nut loose; I used the XC90 spring seat over a year ago and it's been just fine. I didn't change the other at the time (it was really cold and I was working in my driveway), and as far as I know it is still original.

[C@lvin]

My experience with the spring seat on my 98 S70 NA 203K was that it made more of what I would call a squeak or creak when going over bumps. I would not have characterized the noise as a rattle. It sounded more to me like a creaky stair or floor sound. Interestingly, I also noticed that the colder it got outside, the louder it got. On warm days the noise might go away all together.

The PO gave me 99% of the receipts since 20K in 1999 and as best I could tell the car was still running on all original suspension components when I bought the car. I replaced the right front spring seat in 11/07 at 161K and the left front spring seat 30K later in 03/10 at 191K.

I used Febi-Bilstein spring seats from Eeuroparts.com that are $23. At 42K on the first one and 12K on the second one there have been no problems.

My 00 V70 NA 120K is still running on all original suspension (except for a TRW left outer steering end link/tie rod) with no current symptoms of component failure(s).