After taking it apart myself and along taking it to a better shop, No more dobbs for me, they found out its the strut bearings. He also found a few other things my car needed and showed me, way better place than the previous one I used to go to.

 

Sounds like the same problem I'm experiencing right now...Its been going on for a while. Same popping/creaking sound..just like you said. Do you know if its something thats difficult to change?

 

If its the same thing that's wrong with mine the strut bearing plates are easy to change, you minus will just replace the entire strut structure, it's just 5 bolts. You can buy the entire strut with everything for about $80 a piece at completestrut.com

 

yea, I unfortunately got to do everything one at a time, fix the important stuff now & the rest later. Going with the set of KYB adjustable + lowering springs so the whole strut assembly is going to be done at another time.

 

I went ahead and changed my front struts. the noise mostly went away, my ball joint is torn...its only two years old. going to change that. It was an easy job. now I need to do the rear asap the rear sags bad. look at the before and after.

 

so do you still have the noise?

After all the work I've done I still got the same noise on the one side...

 

My '01 has the same noise but only when turning right. I took it to a trusted front-end shop and they changed the CV joint but that didn't fix it so he reinstalled the old CV joint and suggested it may be the struts, since they had 190,000 miles on them. I changed the struts myself and the noise is still there. I suspect the rack but now I'm going to hunt a little harder for the source, before replacing the rack. It sounds like a real pain in the butt of a job.