Squeaky Dakars : Any advice from others with the Dakars ?

I got the squeak too!
Not able to put any pond liner in as of yet. So white lithium or chain lube?

 

I had best success with the chain lube

 

Looks like I'll be tackling this issue this weekend. Took a little over a month but my Dakars now have the infamous squeak/creak. How hard would it be to drill a hole and add an actual leaf pack anti-squeak pad? I'll just do the rubber thing, more curious than anything.

 

I've heard this is more dangerous than anything since it weakens the leaf. The pond line works perfectly so yeah.

 

Gonna tackle this this weekend. Took mine about a week to start squeaking and i'm getting tired of listening to it

 

I started a thread on that very question , consensus was ; that location is a bad place to drill a hole and probably why there isn't one there

 

Figured it was something like that. Guess I'll try and find a small pack of pond liner. Quick searches on-line and I'm only finding stuff that is over $100. Might just stick a bike tube in there for now if I can't find any pond liner easily.

 

I just went to my local lumber supplier , they sell pond liner by the foot

 

Head to a local tire dealer and see if they have any truck/tractor tubes that are junk. They're a lot thicker than bike tubes. I have a chunk from the garage I used to work at

 

I have some leftovers if you need them. (for a few bucks)

 

I'll let you know if I can't find anything. I'm sure in a town the size of San Antonio, I can find someone who sells it by the foot.

 

OZ...how did you work the pond liner up in there??? Jack up the truck on stands and stick a screwdriver in there???

 

Yep

 

I've experimented a couple of things. Mine was the leaves themselves, not the bushings. Cheapest fix seems to be lots of grease between each leaf, full length (as best I could without loosing u-bolts anyway).

For passenger side, I just used a big screw driver to pry a gap in the leaves and then used a needle adapter on grease gun to pump grease between each leaf. Jumped on rear bumper to help smoosh out excess and wiped it off. After a day or so of driving, the grease had worked in to all the spaces and it only squeeks once in a while now. Going on 4 months now. Didn't do anything to driver side at that time and it still squeeks a lot.

This evening, for driver side, I put some 3/16 inch thick plastic on the leaf that doesn't already have a wear pad on it. Then jumped on the bumper and no squeeks at all. Had to put a pad both front and back between the same 2 leaves to completely get rid of the squeek. I can't find my epoxy and I don't want to lose the pads so I took them out and just greased it like I had done on the other side. Those pads are heavy duty vibration isolation pads from McMaster.

I had used A LOT of grease on the passenger side. Used only a little on driver side tonight so we'll see what happens after few days. I may end up packing more in there this weekend if needed.

 

my squeak wasn't the bushings either

 

The majority of people having squeak issues is not the bushing but from that leaf you put the plastic in. Oz already figured that out for us and how to fix it.

 

Actually that and the leaf above that is where most of my noise was coming from

 

Meh, semantics! Too bad you can't change the title of the thread to "How to fix your squeaky dakars."

 

I am going to try this stuff

Little Giant 567371 Pond Liner Repair Kit

http://www.amazon.com/Little-Giant-...id=1376915202&sr=1-3&keywords=EPDM+pond+liner

 

That's EPDM pond liner , same thing I used