Need help diagnosing suspension clunk and steering wobble

[Gordons986]

Originally Posted by Steve Tinker

Gordon, I'm afraid that you are going to have to face he fact that your suspension is worn out @ 230,000km. Its going to be an expensive exercise no matter what you do - shocks, shock bearings, coffin arms, trailing / control arms, drop links, steering rods etc etc. Probably $3000 in parts if you do the work yourself, plus a 4 wheel alignment.

The rattles, clunking, squeaking and steering wobbles are being created not by one worn component, but a combination of wear in all the multilink bushes and ball joints. Pushing, pulling, tapping with rubber mallets while the suspension is either loaded or hanging makes not the slightest difference to detecting the wear - believe me, I spent 3 months chasing down a single worn control arm bush which knocked only over corrugations. I finished up replacing ALL of the front suspension @ only 75,000km.
You are entering the expensive end of owning an old, high mileage Porsche - replacing "ad hoc" only parts of the suspension is not going to fix your problems....

Steve, I know what you mean but i have owned the car for the last few years and do most of the maintenance myself and have had the car looked over by the dealer within the last year and have never encountered steering problems or suspension issues. This issue started out of no where so it is to my belief that the wobble and the knock are cause of the same part failing. I believe probably most parts are nearing their failure point as well. I have all receipts for the car since it left Porsche in 2000 and there are no records of anything being replaced short of the left rear wheel bearing.

While we are on the topic of replacing struts could you recommend a good site to buy new struts from? would i need new springs? or would you rather recommend coil overs? and could you refer me to a site for that?

I believe i will probably end up replacing the wishbone/coffin arms and control/trailing arms on the front first along with the swaybar links. and go from there.

I am looking to autoX the car in the new season coming up.