I began questioning the rear shock mounts this morning as the 2.1's use a stud and spacer to offset the shock body for clearance. I am curious to see now if the stud doesn't go all the way through the stock bracket and is pivoting, or if it passes all the way through and is captured by the washer. I will double check the tightness of the front shocks as well.

The ball joints are brand new (Dynatrac ProSteer), but when I installed the uppers, they seemed to go in VERY easy. I applied some green loctite to the body during the install because they are rebuild-able and I should not have to remove the body portion. I will do a check for movement there also.

 

Have fun rebuilding those ball joints....it's effing pain in the ass. If I had to do it all over again, I'd rather just press in new BJs than jack around with that. I have a thread on it somewhere.

My money is on the shocks/shock bolts considering the noise happens when the body rolls a bit (turning up in to a drive or whatnot as described), specially since you have eliminated the sway bar/links as being the culprit.

 

Is the pain offsetting of the upgraded internals in the ball joints? That was part of the selling point for me. Along that same line, has anyone heard of using a Dynatrac lower BJ and a Rare Parts dual load carrying upper? Seems like you would get the best all around setup with rebuild-ability and the extra load dispersion.

 

Here's my thread for a few minutes of fun reading when you have time. -

https://www.jk-forum.com/forums/modi...ebuild-347721/

I haven't read through that thread in a long time. I think I outline just about all my gripes and how the rebuildable aspect of em is just a joke from the cost, the process, and the fact they didn't seem to last much longer. I'd suggest to anyone debating the purchase to just go with RP to start with.

 

I'll take a look when I get some down time. Thanks.

 

OMG.....just re-reading through my old thread and my blood pressure is on the rise. Don't stop reading after the initial passenger side replacement.

 

Wow. Gotta say, that gave me some anxiety just reading that based on how some of my other part installs always have something that derails the whole thing.

 

Morning update:

Checked the front shocks yesterday at lunch. Tight, no difference.
Checked the rear shocks last night. Tight, no difference.
Grasping at straws, I pulled out a bolt from the inner fender support bracket that I installed backwards simply to hang to it until I replaced the inner fenders this week. The thought was that it might be sticking through the nut-sert and catching on the support during body roll causing the noise. It wasn't.

 

I was crawling under the Jeep last night with a flashlight and ran across something that I think MAY be the issue. I will investigate more this weekend, but when I added spring correction pads, I rotated the spring to move one of the coils away from the rear track bar bolt/nut. It looks like in doing so I may have over rotated it and the lower capturing pad isn't holding the bottom of the spring real well and may be popping in and out of underneath the pad. I am going to lift the rear and spin that spring back closer to factory position without interfering with the bolt/nut and see what happens.

 

This isn't as fancy as nice retainers, but I use large hose clamps (the worm gear style) run up through the axle's perch and around the spring to help hold things in place. Not certain that would make any difference for you, but since you'll be down there messing with things you might consider it.