Ok. So i decided to take look at the truck this weekend to see if i could find what was causing an intermittent squelling while driving. Looked underneath the hood with engine on and under the truck. Jumped on the bed to shake it. No noise. I decided to spray some lube on the hangers for the exhaust for craps and giggles.

I took a few pics of the shocks and the front sway bar end links.

First the black plastic thing on the shock of the passenger side under the spring is cracked. Not sure what it is but the driver side isnt. Not sure how bad this is either. Also the end link on the passenger side looks really bent. The driver side is slightly bent. Not very noticeable at quick glance. I have no clue what they look like new on the truck. But usually they are straight! Here are the pics.

passenger side shock-


Passenger side sway bar end link-


Driver side sway bar end link-

 

Plastic thing on strut tower is a dust boot. Both mine are cracked, no big deal on my 5 year old truck but yours is new. The endlinks look fine to me, they have ball joints in them to pivot.

 

Hey Rok, is there any history of accident damage on your truck?

The sway bar itself is pretty much indestructible. Spring steel is really hard to change shape, being rubber mounted, with breakable links on the ends of them make it that much more resilient. Nothing is fool proof, but I would assume that that part is proper.

I would have the dealer look at that boot, and get them to change it under warranty. They might tell you it is broken as a result of impact with rocks, or road debris. Deny, deny, deny.

Part of the process to change the boot is having to do a wheel alignment when completed. It is the same process as putting bilstein 5100's on. Remove shock/spring assembly, compress spring, disassemble, replace boot, reassemble, re-install, do alignment.

That will give a better indicator if your link is disrupted because of alignment issues. It looks like a loss of Caster might be a problem on that side. Or, maybe the truck is parked on un-level ground.

Start with dealer, and warranty on the boot.

 

No accident. Just been offroading a lil but havent been in months. I know there is nothing wrong with the sway bar. just the endlinks looked off. If they tried to tell me rock impact id call them a *Censored* Liar. The crack looks like someone stepped on it. Only thing is I really dont like the dealer down here. They told me nothing was wrong with my explorer that i traded in to a different dealer when it had a bad CV joint and it was popping almost every low speed turn. And it was loud. But I will run it up there and have them look at it with me right there. I will tell them my experience before and they need to please the customer.

 

Like I said, I see nothing wrong with your end links, and the cracked thing is a dust boot for the coilover strut, but your truck is new so see what they say.

 

Not in to much of a hurry since its not anything major. But thanks for the help!

 

replace the worst of the 2 sway bar link pins i bet the one that is bent the worst is making the noise. ps call the dealer and tell them to replace it hahah