Squeaky front end

My 2013 just went over 175,000 miles. The other day, my wife mentioned she could hear me coming before she could see the truck. I don’t hear well due to hearing damage, but I didn’t notice the squeaking until I rolled down my windows and drove. I do basic maintenance like changing my own oil, brakes, greasing what is grease able, so am fairly handy. The amount of squeaking coming from my truck is alarming. It squeaks when I turn the wheel while not moving. Any slight flex of the suspension also creates a squeak with some pop ish sounds. Seems to be coming from both sides. Where should I start to eliminate the squeaks. I’m tempted to just replace the whole front suspension… LCAs, UCAs, ball joints, etc. but I don’t want to do it cheap, but I’m poor.

 

Check your bushings, front upper body mount/radiator support. Solved my front end squeaking.

 

There are a lot of joints in the front of IFS trucks. Even at a standstill you can have movement at all the joints if you are steering or rocking the truck.

I would sit someone in the drivers seat and have them move the steering wheel back and forth quickly while I am under the front end feeling and listening for noise. TREs should be tight with no slop, BJs should be tight without movement up and down, LCAs and UCAs should be tight with no unusual movement. a long screwdriver against your ear or the bone right in front of your ear and against a component is a nice mechanics stethoscope too.


One of the only Gotchas about our trucks is the LCA cam adjuster bolts. They are almost always seized to the LCA bushing. Replacing the LCA usually requires replacing the cam adjusters too. I run Moog LCAs in my truck, but OEM is best.

A cheap option is to look for 3rd gen takeoff suspension. It was much more common to find it cheap when they had low miles, but now that the 4th gens are out they are less common.

 

Found a local selling a ‘22 OR suspension with 20,000 miles (coilovers, UCAs, rear leafs and shocks) for $100. Going to order new front upper body mount/radiator support and lower ball joints and tear into it when I get a free weekend. Most of the squeak seemed to come from the radiator body mount area, but a suspension refresh will be nice.