Holmeslice
2020 VS30 144" High Crew
Hi Folks,
I've had a chronic crunch/knock in my steering since about 30k miles. I've read many, many threads on this, and know others have had similar issues. In a nutshell; my van makes a knocking noise when I go over small bumps, at low speed (like parallel parking, or pulling into a gas station, etc). I had the steering rack changed under a goodwill warranty at about 50,000 miles, which helped for a while, but the noise came back after about 7-8000 miles. I haven't done anything to correct it again, now at 75,000 miles, other than tightening up a bit on the pinion lash nut. As it is now, if I put the van in park with the motor running and turn the wheel lock-to-lock there is an audible stutter or knock that can be felt in the steering wheel each rotation.
I took it to a different (and quite reputable) Mercedes Sprinter shop for an unbiased opinion and their tech put it up on the lift and reported back he believes it's struts. Not the rack at all. Hmmmm.
So, does this sound plausible? I know very little about steering and suspension. Perhaps I've been chasing the wrong problem all along? But would struts go bad after such low mileage on a van that gets fairly delicate use?
In any case, the shop want $979.00 to replace the struts. Does this sound reasonable? I've read on here where others do this job themselves, but I don't have the ability living in NYC with no place to pull a van apart, even for a short time.
Any advice on any of this would be greatly appreciated.
-Kenny
I've had a chronic crunch/knock in my steering since about 30k miles. I've read many, many threads on this, and know others have had similar issues. In a nutshell; my van makes a knocking noise when I go over small bumps, at low speed (like parallel parking, or pulling into a gas station, etc). I had the steering rack changed under a goodwill warranty at about 50,000 miles, which helped for a while, but the noise came back after about 7-8000 miles. I haven't done anything to correct it again, now at 75,000 miles, other than tightening up a bit on the pinion lash nut. As it is now, if I put the van in park with the motor running and turn the wheel lock-to-lock there is an audible stutter or knock that can be felt in the steering wheel each rotation.
I took it to a different (and quite reputable) Mercedes Sprinter shop for an unbiased opinion and their tech put it up on the lift and reported back he believes it's struts. Not the rack at all. Hmmmm.
So, does this sound plausible? I know very little about steering and suspension. Perhaps I've been chasing the wrong problem all along? But would struts go bad after such low mileage on a van that gets fairly delicate use?
In any case, the shop want $979.00 to replace the struts. Does this sound reasonable? I've read on here where others do this job themselves, but I don't have the ability living in NYC with no place to pull a van apart, even for a short time.
Any advice on any of this would be greatly appreciated.
-Kenny