Postby venum » June 20th, 2010, 6:40 pm
Mr. ContraBass welcome to our little side of wonderful motoring and thank you for sharing your experience
the KB4 is indeed a lovely vehicle and many advances from the older days and models of L200 have been implemented
however, lift springs are as ancient but reliable a technology as 4x4 pickup trucks themselves
they are simple and effective in design which inevitably leads to their design drawbacks
they very design of lift springs cause them to become noisy with age
I have tried several things with my 2003 K74T's lift springs (including some unique experiences) to get them to become quiet
the KB4T lift springs are not much different to the K74T or K34T
what ha worked to some extent for me, although not removing the problem entirely is changing the shackle bushings (use OEM - they cheap by DM ~ TT$50.00 each)
regular greasing
I usually spray lithium grease between the individual lifts, this reduces the noise
actually i was able to completely silence them, but not at an easy and convenient way, not to mention messy way
I used the thick grease that the service stations use to grease nipples to grease teh individual lifts - this coupled with new shackle bushings stopped ALL noise for a long period of time
but as can be imagined, the springs were quite messy and attracted a LOT of dust and dirt, my three dogs were quite black and greasy as they usually hang out under my truck
not to mention a grease nightmare when I was required to change a couple of the lifts
what makes teh L200 more noise than other trucks is the number of individual lift springs making up a bundle
the K74 has 5 the K34 has 6
the B2500 and Frontier has only 3
more lifts = more noise as there are more pieces of metal rubbing and slapping each other