Help diagnosing creak under acceleration (1 Viewer)

[westwardCruiser]

Last summer on the way home from HIH I started noticing a creaking sound. At the time I just attributed it to my noisy military trailer after lots of time in the dirt. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. I've finally gotten around to dealing with it and I'm unsure what's going on.

Here are the symptoms. It sounds like it's only coming from the front left suspension somewhere, and you can feel it ever so slightly. It sounds like a creaky floor board.

• Turning left under acceleration, or going straight under heavy acceleration
• No sound when braking regardless of which way I'm turning
• No sound when turning right
• No sound when turning left slowly
• No sound when rocking on truck from sliders and front/rear bumpers

Here is what I've done so far

1. Replaced left upper ball joint. I noticed this was pretty loose when I rebooted it last spring. Lower ball joint was just replaced 5k miles ago.
2. Took all of the air out of my airbags in rear springs (as I found some reports of these making noise)
3. Loosed sliders, slid back, and torqued to 44 ft/lbs. I saw a lot of people saying this was the source of their creak; but doesn't seem to be the case here.

What I'm about to do next

1. Replace motor and trans mounts
2. Replace stabilizer bar bushings and links

I did have OME TBs installed before my trip last summer. Is there anything resulting from that and the associated diff drop that could result in these symptoms?

Anything else I'm not accounting for?

 

[99Cruiser]

Does it creak when going over speed bump? Maybe try left side then right side. I would do stabilizer bar end links next before motor and trans mount since they are easy to change out and are cheap.

 

[westwardCruiser]

Does it creak when going over speed bump? Maybe try left side then right side. I would do stabilizer bar end links next before motor and trans mount since they are easy to change out and are cheap.

Not that I recall, but I don't drive over too many of them. I'll have to go find some and find out.

I do plan on doing the bushings/links first. But since it's got 285k on the clock, and i have no evidence of the mounts ever being changed it's probably not a bad idea to just swap them out while I'm at it.

 

[westwardCruiser]

I replaced the sway bar bushings and that wasn't it so I had my shop take a look while it was in for inspection. They are saying the right torsion bar bracket is bent. I'll have to take a look at it tonight, but I'm wondering if this has happened to anyone else?

I had these installed when they did the TBs last year: OME 100 Series Front Torsion Bar Reinforcement Bracket and I'm assuming that's what they're referring to

As to how it happened I'm not really sure, I had Dissent skids on for all my wheeling and I only noticed it on the way home from HIH last summer. Must have had a hit hard enough to bend it through the skids