This is my wife's doctor visit and grocery shopping car. I can only guess at the mileage at over 100,000 since the odometer has not worked for almost 19 years.

This clunking is only when turning a fairly sharp right such as entering a driveway over a street runoff (slight bump).
It does not do it going straight or turning left at any speed.
I did the front end bounce test of the struts, they are a little slow but good enough, I get no porpoising (SP?)on the highway. There is no noise during the bounce test.
I checked the front for play and everything is tight.
Could it be the the driver side CV joints, if not, what else?

Another possibility:
This front end does not have sway bar links, the sway bar ends are mounted directly to the lower control arm in rubber bushings. Upon further investigation of the sway bar ends I see the left one is really shinny where it goes in and out of the bushing and there is a shinny area of the frame where the front tire has been rubbing.

Are the lower control arm bushings worn out so badly that the whole control arm is shifting front to back? This is getting scary, I am 80 years old and on a limited budget. The shop where I have been taking this car for the past 10 years told me the front end clunking was worn out front struts and wanted almost $800.00 to replace them.

HELP PLEASE!

 

You've covered just about everything. Have you considered getting a couple of other opinions? The concern I would have without actually looking at the car is why the L/F tire is contacting the frame. Unless you have different size tires on the car something is worn enough to allow that to happen. I would have a front end shop look at it , and a few other places too.

 

Hanky, Thanks for responding.
I will plan to jack it up this weekend take off the front wheels and start poking and shoving and see if I can get a better handle on it. I will look seriously at anything that would allow the tire to rub the frame.
The tires are the same size as the originals and all the same age and have been rotated yearly whether they need it or not .
I'll keep at it until I either figure it out or find a front end shop that can, I have plenty of time to play with it.

 

Unfortunately, all the cars I've had that have had similar noises, ended up never getting diagnosed and fully fixed.
Yes, I've slightly reduced the instance of the noises by replacing this piece and that, but never quite got rid of it to my satisfaction.

That said, I've always wondered if the noise I was hearing was not actually a strut arm or control arm bracket flexing where it was mounted/welded to the body. The sound always made me think of welded body panels flexing and "creaking" even though the sound was more of a clunk than a creak.
No squeak involved, just popping or clunking.

The good news is that it never caused a problem or ended up in any failure of any component.
Sounds like your own inspection might have latched on to something though. That swaybar end might be sliding along, sticking, then "popping out" with a clunk. Could be worth some new bushings at least. Of course, the labor to have them installed would likely be four times the cost of the bushings. Or more!

Struts do wear out of course, and so do their upper mounts. So while your mechanic's diagnosis may, or may not, have been correct, he's not completely out of the world either.
I agree with you though, on forgoing that expensive swap until you feel they're really needed. After all, 800 bucks is 800 bucks!

Good luck. Under the limited circumstances and limited volume that the sound makes, I wouldn't stress to much about it yet.
But if the clunk is very heavy and you can easily feel it through the floorboards, then yeah, I'd dig deeper and start throwing parts at it.

Paul

 

SwitchPitch,
Thanks for the encouraging words.
I put this project on hold for a while, Momma says I have to wait for the next SS check.
I think getting the left front wheel off the ground and using some pry bars may help getting to the bottom of the noise. I plan to change out the sway bar rubber bushings regardless of what I find.