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.
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?
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.