OK, replaced control arms, inner and outer tie rods, sway bar with poly bushings, engine torque bar bushings, newer front hubs, replaced struts with Monroe quick struts few years ago, im getting a clunk/knock sound when I hit a bump, even small bumps/ potholes etc ? jacked car up and shook wheels etc, nothing! only thing left I can think of is (a) front struts bad from replacing them years before all the other front end parts or (b) intermediate steering shaft ? I have read where you can grease these but I don't see grease fixing a "clunk" sound from front end ?

 

Always a pain finding a clunk. Greasing the steering shaft would be a pain as you would need to remove the boot on the rack to get to the u-joint that I don't believe has a grease zerk. I'm not sure of your body size but here's what I would try. Get enough blocks of wood and a piece of plywood underneath the tires so you can fit . Have someone in the car turning the wheel back and forth with engine off. Should help locate the noise . Also if you haven't checked the sway bar , inspect both the bolts and the bar itself as they are know to break . Good luck

 

Check that the castle nut on the lower ball joint is tight. I found on my Grand Am that when I replaced my lower ball joints, I thought I had them tight. Turns out, because the stem was at an angle, I later learned, I was wrong. Drove the car, everything "seated" better and exposed that I had a gap between the castle nut and the knuckle. This small gap resulted in a clunk noise. To fix the problem, I had to put in some washers to shim the difference.

 

When you did your struts, did you check the 3 bolt factory top strut mounts? The rubber doughnut style shock absorber in there can dry rot and let the strut bounce around up there making a clunking noise. Happened to my car before. You can get new ones for dirt cheap if that is the problem.

 

thank you guys for the tips to check, both make sense, I will be checking these this weekend

 

Did you resolve this problem?