I need help with finding a clunk from the front end.

It's a deep sounding clunk going over bumps from 5-30mph.

What I've done:

Grabbed the wheel (with the car jacked up of course) top and bottom as well as each side to see if there was any play - there was not.
Took the wheel off to grab each control arm to yank it about to see if there was any play - there was not (on any arm).
Changed both bushings on the sway bar.
Changed the drivers side motor mount.

The clunk continues.


After pondering for a while my next guess is the sway bar end links and here's my reasoning:

1) Both times I took the sway bar down (first for the motor mount then for the bushings) the clunk made slightly different noise. Still a definite, deep, clunk, but slightly altered in a different way each time. The first time I took it down and put it back, the passenger side started giving me clunks. The second time it made a much more solid noise instead of a quieter and more often (a couple clunks for each bump instead of the now one big, solid one).
2) During my push-pull tests of the control arms, I never touched the end links. I figured they couldn't produce that noise. (I had no reasoning they couldn't, just thought because they were so small).


Do our end links have the ability to make a noise like that? In researching, I found a lot of cars have different types of end links, some of which may be more prone to clunking than others.


Sorry for the essay. Thanks for any help!

 

Possibilities:

1. Sway bar links (as you said).
2. Snub mount.
3. Struts (either bad shock(s), loose hardware and/or worn bushing(s).

That's all I can think of right now.

.

 

I would start by checking the upper shock mounts and sway bar links. Control arms are a known issue with this chassis so they're a very probable culprit too.

 

Snub mount was replaced about 2 years ago. I don't think it's that, but of course it could be.

I'll check the end links tonight hopefully.

It can't be the coilovers themselves right? Those are damn expensive.

 

Well shoot.

I went out and took the front wheels off and grabbed EVERYTHING this time and shook as hard as I could and NOTHING moved one centimeter. I pressed up and down just above the wheel well (with the wheels back on and on the ground) and could NOT reproduce the sound. It's almost as if something is just loose and bouncing around.

The one small thing I noticed was the lower-rear control arm had some press to it. Not so much a knock or as if it was loose, but as if it had some give, like it was supposed to be that way so it DIDN'T knock around. I notice it's the biggest bushing down there and it also just so happens to be the one I broke less than a year ago and replaced. So that particular bushing is ~9 months old. Granted it could have been a bad bushing but it's not really making the same sound as before.

I checked the shock and it wasn't leaking fluid anywhere so it's probably not the those (which is probably wasn't anyway given the symptoms, but given the price to replace those, I wanted to be sure).

I'm not opposed to just buying two new end links and throwing them on there this weekend... but if it's NOT those and I do end up buying a completely new set of arms, I'll have paid for an extra set of end links that I won't need, which will be annoying.

I'm not sure how to check the shock mounts

 

In my case, it was a front swaybar end link. It can be hard to diagnose because it tends to only be evident under load, like when going around a curve or over a bump. What happens is the bushing on the swaybar end link gets either worn or compressed, which allows it to slide across the bolt when there's tension. Even a small amount of motion there will cause a noticeable "clunk" under the right conditions. But it won't really show by looking or trying to budge it by hand. I got used to it and ignored it until the bolt ripped right out of the end link. That took almost 3 years. Then I had the end link replaced at my last annual state inspection. Now the car handles better than ever.

 

Just following up on this. It was indeed the two sway bar end links. Pretty cheap fix too and only took an hour or so.

Thanks for everybodys help

 

Thank Jeebus, I figured whatever defect it was had already killed you