I've had a crazy clunking sound in the front end of my 2008 S with sport suspension for months now. Any small, subtle road undulations in the road would cause multiple clanking noises. Almost like someone was hitting the underside of the car with something plastic.

About 20-25k miles ago the entire suspension was replaced. I mean every last bushing, struts, ball joint, front and rear, the 3 motor mounts etc. Everything but the springs.

I spent an entire day tying Chassis Ears microphones on multiple suspension points, and driving around and them moving the microphones and driving some more and I sort of isolated it to the tie rods ends....but it was not conclusive.

I checked torque specs at least 3 times on every bolt in the subframes and suspension, pried on ball joints and bushings but I simply could not find anything obvious. (car in the air, not loaded down on suspension) In the past I've broken the inner ball joint on the control arm on one side which also caused a clanking. This was also not as easy to diagnose as one would assume. Here it is:




2 years ago one of the Moog tie rod boots tore. Then the second one tore. In just the last year the outer tie rod end rubber boots on both sides tore. One was Moog the other was Febi. Always torqued to spec. This had me thinking that the noise was related to the tie rod ends. Or maybe the steering rack. I changed the outer ends, which like I said had maybe 20k-25k miles on them, got the car aligned and the noise stopped for 5 miles or so but then returned! WTF.

Well I finally realized I had never removed the front sway bar end links to see if the issue was related to the swaybar bushings or end links, even though they weren't obviously broken and I had pried on them multiple times and they felt tight. I even had a microphone on the damn sway bar end link and it was making only intermittent noise. One of the end links did have a torn boot but other than that they weren't obviously loose. When I removed them the clanking stopped. I put in new units from Autozone (lifetime warranty) which cost the same as every other brand ($21 each) and the noise is gone.

Honestly I dont think that my clanking noises are gone forever BUT if you have this issue, isolate the sway bar end links even if they look healthy.

 

My maddening clunk is somewhere in the rear and really hear it when it’s cooler out. I’ve replaced struts, strut foam bumpers, sway bar bushings, end links and rear trailing arm bushings. Also checked the exhaust mounts, rear hatch and license plate,(which others have mentioned) but to no avail. I’ve been trying to nail it down since owning the car and have just about given up finding it. Everything in the front has been replaced as well.

 

Fuel tank tight?