The clunk

[tedanderson]

My name is Ted.. and I have a clunk. There. I said it.

I just started to have clunking issues the other day. It concerned me so much that I pulled over into a parking lot, jacked up the entire front end and then I began to tug on the wheels shifting them up and down to left and right to detect ball joint or idler arm issues.

Everything was relatively tight. And I also got that "slipping on ice" effect when I was changing lanes in slow traffic. I'll look at my body mounts as that could be the one thing that I have not checked.

[Jasen]

Mines starting to do it again. I think the only thing I can do is crank the nuts down to 3,358 ft. lbs. The design of it only holds the C/A out under load, but theres nothing to hold it in when the load is transferring around like when your pulling into driveways and the like at an angle. Then of course as the slot starts to wear, it gives it more room to move around.

[Shad0wXCalibur]

If you can get even higher grade bolts, I think you can torque them pretty good without shearing them.

[mervchapman]

It's your upper control arm bushings mates! I just replaced mine on my 2000 AWD. Fixed the reversing/ turning clunk and improved general handling substantially. I had replaced everything else (yup, everything). Turns out the last front suspension/ steering parts i replaced should have been first. Oh well....

The upper control arms in the AWD are long and as those chubby bushings degrade you'll have constant and appreciable steering angle changes causing all sorts of weird driving experiences in addition to 'the clunk'. Go ahead and replace them, you know you want to!! May as well take care of the lower control arm bushings also.

[Jasen]

That was part of it, this is the other part. I have to rip it apart again and do some metal fab and welding.



Sense I've unload over 1k lbs of tools it's stopped clunking, but I still need to address this.

[mervchapman]

I see those nice new bushings in there. How are the lowers? My rear-most lower bushings were done thanks in part to that sophisticated torsion bar design :0)