Help - FP coils contacting front shock buckets

[Hedrock]

Hey folks - pics attached. Any advice much appreciated!

TLDR front driver coil contacting front of bucket, front passenger coil contacting rear of bucket. Alignment?

Have a 22 BD 4-dr with 37xxx on it. Around 12xxx miles I had the ford performance Bilstein 6100s installed, and Kenda 35x10.5s on the factory steelies.

In the last 5-7k miles, I started noticing a clunk from the front end. Intermittently, usually when cranking the wheel very fast at low speeds. As I’ve been out on the trails more this summer it will (with no apparent pattern) make the same noise with only minor shifts.

Looking for any advice/insights - is this possibly an alignment thing?

Wondered if it might be because I’ve added weight in the rear and the suspension has settled and I haven’t gotten it realigned.

UPDATE: coils are in fact misaligned and have been damaging the front passenger top hat. nice job diagnosing, internet friends! Occasional clunk from coils contacting buckets, and creaking/groaning sound intermittently from front passenger.

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[Hedrock]

Adding photos + trail tax

Front driver
Front driver
Nice views in NoCo
Front passenger

 

[GI_Jo_Nathan]

Sorry been a while since I've had mine apart, is there a chance the coils are upside down or something?

 

[Brian_B]

Kinda looks like the top of the spring isn't centered anymore. May try taking the tension off and seeing if you can rotate the spring around a bit

 

[Hedrock]

Sorry been a while since I've had mine apart, is there a chance the coils are upside down or something?

Shouldn’t be, they came pre assembled from Ford.

 

[Hedrock]

Kinda looks like the top of the spring isn't centered anymore. May try taking the tension off and seeing if you can rotate the spring around a bit

I’ll get in and take a closer look after work today. I think this is just the angle of the photos but I’ll check.

 

[GI_Jo_Nathan]

I would go ahead and start lubing those rusty studs in preparation for removal. There is clearly something going on. Mine definitely have plenty of clearance. I'd be surprised if those springs were that much wider.

 

[CitrusBronco]

It looks like the coil is loose, moved out, if so something is wrong. Hard to tell from the pictures, I would pull that out to see what’s going on.
Another pic for comparison.
Mine has a small top hat lift so you see the top of my coil.

 

[Brian_B]

Almost looks like the springs didn’t have enough pre-load and shifted in the top of the housing when too relaxed

 

[Hedrock]

UPDATE: coils are in fact misaligned and have been damaging the front passenger top hat. nice job diagnosing, internet friends! Occasional clunk from coils contacting buckets, and creaking/groaning sound intermittently from front passenger.

Don’t know if they were shipped that way, since they arrived with springs already installed, or if they shifted after installation. Jumping train tracks and water bars probably didn’t help.

Ford store quoted me $1300 to fix them, screw that since they’re not adjustable anyway. I paid 1700ish initially. Going to go to an Icon stage 3. Will update with pictures in case it helps someone in the future once the FP is out and Icons are on.

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