Just in middle of job. The arb slides across easily back to correct position and the collars can be easily slid back to next to the rubber bushes. They presumably keep the arb from sliding sideways. Problem is the the collars slide rather too easily so will shift again. I was thinking of putting Loctite thread locking compound between the collar and arb to try to hold them in place. But it

Pushed the arb collars/bushed back into the rubber mounts and superglued them to the arb to stop them moving again. Not sure if this is a brilliant idea as it now means the arb can’t turn in the plastic bushes now. Instead the bushes will have to turn in the rubber mounts.

But the bad news is that the knock is still present so it’s obviously some other problem. I found the battery was not screwed down but tightening this does not remove the noise. I notice that my radiator is quite wobbly on one side and I see someone else reported this as a souse of rattling.

My arb links have no play that I can detect.

How does one replace the arb collars? I can’t see how one could slide then onto the arb? Buy a whole new arb?

By taking the links off a waggling them a lot I see that there is no wear in links but the arb does clonk in the rubber bushes, so maybe these are worn out.

Beginning to think I made a big mistake supergluing the plastic bushes in place as the plastic bushes rotating in the rubber ones may make them wear out more quickly. Thinking of silicone grease on them to cut wear rate.

By the way mine is not a vrs model. Is a 1.4mpi. So maybe I incorrectly posted this thread here.

I had this random clunking noise from the front end, it happened over bumps but not every bump, it was very hard to repeat the fault despite hearing a few times a day.

Anyway after much digging by the dealer it turned out that it was the N/S gearbox/console mount. Skoda has created a technical bulletin for it and the solution is to apply some grease between the console and gearbox. Mine was done over 1000 miles ago and I haven't heard the noise since.

What do you mean by the console?

Mine makes the noise on every single bump.

The console is a part of the suspension. Aluminuim construction, look under the car and you'll see them.

Maybe supergluing the bushes back was not such a bad idea of mine, as a Skoda parts dept now tells me that these bushes were glued to the arb on the original arb design. But superglue may not last long as the original glue was