Diagnosing a Clunk

Car: 2008 Mazdaspeed3

Rear Suspension on the driver side is clunking over bumps. Anything from a small rumble to a larger bump. It doesn’t really do it too badly over a sweeping dip though. More sudden bumps than anything. If I hit a bump with ONLY the passenger side wheels, no clunk. Specifically the driver real wheel.

Is any of this making sense?

I went under there with some wrenches last night and everything was nice and tight.

I am thinking, this could be a sway bar endlink? How does one diagnose a bad endlink? They’re sort of simple. The littlle boot on it wasn’t ripped, and it seemed tight.

I can reproduce this by jumping up and down in the door sill of the rear driver door. Unfortunately, I can’t be under the car for this as well.

Any ideas?

Strut and/or shock is blown…

It is my only complaint with the car so far.

I had one replaced already under warranty…and its making the same noise again and need to take it in again…

if you want to diagnose the end-links / sway bar just disconnect the end links and zip ties the bar out of the way then drive to see if the noise goes away.

My money is on a bad strut. If you put the car into a ricer/flick drift does the back makes lots of noise and lose traction easily?

+1 for blown strut.

Fuck, I will be furious if it is a Strut

They are Koni Yellows

Sorry, not trying the ricer/flick drift lol

I’ll swap it out with the stock shock to diagnose. The rears come out really easily

Top spring perch lose? End links is a pretty common source of clunk, but mainly on little bumps and imperfections at slow speeds, not major ones.

X…

before you freak out…

on the focus (very similar suspensions) the top mount inside the cabin for the strut is a rubber grommet with a metal insert, and a nut that threads onto the strut. from teh factory, the rubber grommet is designed with a gap in it, and under hard bumps and such it causes a loud “clunk” after they have broken in.

many of us go to home depot and purchase a couple nylon washers large enough to go in between the rubber insert and the metal plate that sticks into it to fill the gap up…its about 1/8"

check that out before you freak out

OK yeah, so I unbolted that top strut mount. 2 nuts in the wheel well since it’s a PITA to get to the single strut bolt from the trunk. Yanked the strut down a bit so I could get to the bolt. Everything SEEMED tight to me, but maybe I just wasn’t strong enough to get it to clunk? I was convinced this was the source of the clunk for a while, but after checking it last night I wasn’t feeling it.

---------- Post added at 01:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:03 PM ----------

Top of the spring perch is the subframe, It’s definitely not JUST slow speeds. I would think if the end link was bad it would clunk even if the passenger wheel hit a bump too. Plus, this clunk is sort of loud. I wouldn’t expect a loud clunk from a little endlink.

Oh, and to make matters worse on this whole thing, I cannot find my wheel lock key…FFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU…so this should be fun trying to get all of them off.

more proof that the only people who have trouble removing wheels locks are the owners of them, LOL

yep…sadly, it’s true

who the hell is gonna steal my stock mazda rims anyways?

When I got my GTO and found it had wheel locks I replaced them with standard lug nuts within a couple weeks of ownership.

yeah, I’m gonna stop at mazda today and see if they’ll just break em loose for me. Then I can go home and swap em out. If I buy the lock, I’m not gonna be able to justify NOT keeping them on.

I highly doubt that any shop would start loosening your lugnuts and let you leave like that, although I may be mistaken on what your intentions are.

I live like 1 or 2 miles away, shouldnt be a problem to break em loose then head straight home. youre probably right though.

Dude why would you have them break em loose then drive home to swap them. Just bring non-locking ones with you and save yourself the extra steps, lol.

ok, good point, but to be honest this is sort OT from my REAL problem…I can handle the lug nuts on my own, I am plenty capable of figuring something out on that.

focusinprogress, where did you go?

Doesn’t everything around here go OT within 10 posts or so?

My guess is along the lines of strut clunk, but wtf do I know.

well I guess that’s the reason it took me 4 short evenings of looking things over to post here

you have aftermarket suspensino right? what type of setup do you have? I get clunks in mine but I know whats causing it and just turn up the radio cause its harmless on my car…

I know these clunks are way annoying. Was searching for weeks with one on my Forester - finally find out that the fold-down rear seat is loose on the latch keeping it up.