Technical 500x cross plus right hand side knocking sound

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Technical 500x cross plus right hand side knocking sound

G1WLM

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Hello

I've been chasing a front end knocking/rattle on our 2016 15K miles 500x Cross Plus and looking to reach out to see if anyone else has experienced and rectified a similar annoying noise.

The noise is mostly evident on rough tracks. urban potholes and abnormal road undulations. Our local Fiat dealer investigated under warranty at MOT time but didn't locate the problem.

I've changed the offside front upper strut mount - no change. I've run the car minus the offside sway bar drop link to eliminate that - no change. I've levered the right-hand side engine mount back and forth and unconvinced there is anything wrong with it.

I've greased the air filter box mounts as I thought it was a bit rigid - still to test that out.

The noise does sound upper rather than lower although I appreciate suspension noise travels and can be misleading. At times you'd swear the noise is coming out of the inside of the drivers door but nothing sounds loose to me when you shake it violently or bump the bottom of it. I don't like to be beat but this one is starting to get me scratching my head a bit.

Anyone have any gems of information or past experiences they could share?. Any pointers would be much appreciated.

Gary
 
Check the engine mount.

This is the main/OS mount that support the cam belt end on the engine to the inner wing.

I had knocking noises and the engine mount had failed. This is a common problem (certainly on 2015 and possibly 2016 models).

The way to check is to to stand by the O/S (driver's in RHD) wheel and place your hands on the end of the engine. No push/thrust the engine to the O/S wheel (towards gearbox) and look at and listen to the engine mount.

What you will see is the metal finger of the engine side of the mount going into the rubber bushing enclosed in to bady/wing side of the mount. The failure is associated with this finger becoming detached from the rubber bush. If this is your problem then you will see the finger sliding in and out of the rubber bush.

This took me some time to finally find/diagnose. Fortunately when I had found the problem I was under warranty and just pointed the dealer at the issue.
 
Thank you very much for taking the time to respond with your helpful advice. I was aware of the engine mount problems and have read a technical service bulletin regarding these on the Fiat 500 USA Forum. Indeed when chatting to my helpful parts guy at the local main dealer about whether they had sold many sway bar drop links for the 500X, he said no but they had turned over a number of engine mounts. I checked my mount as best I could yesterday but was unsure how much movement was normal. I will look closer at the area you suggest though as it may well be excessive movement. I might just plump for a new mount anyway to rule that out. I'll report back on findings. Thanks again, Gary
 
Conscious I never really updated this thread with the fix. The problem was the air filter housing mounts which locate into the offside upper inner wing. The rubber mounts which are push-fits had stuck themselves solid onto the air filter housing. Removed the air box, applied silicon grease into the rubber mounts so the housing was free to slide in and out of the mounts as required and that was it. No more knocking. An easy fix to an expensive sounding knocking noise.

Gary
 
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