Driver side clunk/knock

glwood

glwood

Jeepless
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Joined
Sep 16, 2016
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6,611
Location
Albuquerque, NM
Took my hard top off today, and promptly noticed on a drive around town a distinct clunk or knock coming from the front driver's side periodically. I took off the wheel and checked all the bolts, linkage, steering, track bar, etc., and found nothing loose or out of place. Anyone got any ideas of what to zero in on to look for what might be the cause of this intermittent clunk/knock? It seems I can cause this clunk/knock by accelerating, most of the time, but it can happen from time to time while just driving regularly.

Hard to say if it was doing this previously, and just didn't hear it due to the hard top...2004 Rubicon/auto/21k miles.

There was no movement in the front wheel bearing as far as play side to side or up and down.

Also, I checked the torque on all the control arm bolts per this chart:
https://wranglertjforum.com/threads/jeep-wrangler-tj-torque-specs.3835/
They were all at the proper torque.
 
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Mine has a small clunk from the front end when turning left or right... with the plan to refresh my front end soon I haven't been overly concerned with it. Had a moment the other day with a friend to take a closer look and found play in the drag link end.
 
Today I went through all the steering, sway bar, and track bar connections. All good. I greased the upper ball joints, tie rod ends, drag link ends. Test drive went well for a while, thought the noise was gone, but it returned again later on. I am totally stumped, frustrated, and not sure what to do next...
 
Might sound silly... but I've found a few knocks, pops, and rattles in my day by just tapping on different items under the vehicle with a rubber mallet. If it's more mechanical than that I'm not really sure where to say to go next. Could a bad u joint cause a pop?
 
New to this forum, also new to owning a TJ so I do not have much jeep experience to lean on to help you. Some times a bearing will make noise under load but not have any movement, not sure if they are left and right units or if you could swap them side to side and see if the sound follows the move. Other than that maybe some unusual sources? Loose motor mount, body mount, disc pads rotating a bit?
Noises like this can be very frustrating, been down this road many times, hang in there.

B
 
I'll keep at it. Nothing bothers me more than new noises. I'll find it or learn to live with it and leave it until something becomes obvious, if it gets worse.

One thing I noticed when checking torque on the control arms was the bushings on the front lower control arms are a bit dry and cracked around the outer edges. Whether that could contribute to this is unknown. The bushings might not have many miles on them, but they are 13 years old...
 
FF_Jeep said:
Might sound silly... but I've found a few knocks, pops, and rattles in my day by just tapping on different items under the vehicle with a rubber mallet. If it's more mechanical than that I'm not really sure where to say to go next. Could a bad u joint cause a pop?
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Hey, anything's worth a try...a bad u-joint could cause a pop, but I am not finding any that are bad.
 
What's crazy is how this all started after I took off the hard top...

If I had a Go-Pro, I guess mounting that underneath might tell me something.
 
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Still looking...today on the way to work, when it was cool in the morning, nothing. No noise. Then on the way home, upper 70's, noise is back with a vengeance. This really has me stumped. In the absence of a fellow Jeeper around to help check this out, it's looking more and more like a trip to a shop, if I can find one to trust...
 
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As suggested above, a bad bushing should be high on your list of suspects. Since you apparently already checked the bushings in the steering and track bar, my next suspicion would be the front control arm bushings.
 
Jerry Bransford said:
As suggested above, a bad bushing should be high on your list of suspects. Since you apparently already checked the bushings in the steering and track bar, my next suspicion would be the front control arm bushings.
Click to expand...
Any suggestions on how to check them? I cannot get them to budge...visually I can see that they are somewhat dry around the edges, but I can not detect any unnecessary movement.
 
Latest today:

While removing the rear bumper to test fit the Dirtworx, I discovered a backing plate from the previously removed cargo rack floating around above the driver's side rear wheel well liner. It was on top of the plastic liner, a piece about 4" square, just laying there. It definitely could be the clank culprit, as it was making contact with the rear corner of the body sheet metal, and could have been sliding around all this time. I have not been hearing the noise lately, but now that I have removed it, I plan to see if the noise has disappeared. Seems to be the culprit, as I could never find a loose anything in all the suspension, steering, and driveline inspections. Fingers crossed...

Also discovered - the person who mounted the POS cargo rack, for some inexplicable reason, replaced the rearmost driver's side body mount bolt with a replacement bolt, but the bolt was not threaded enough down the length, so the threads ran out before the bolt was tight. I looked through my parts bin, and happened to have the correct torx body mount bolt. Now that mount is tight and back to oem specs...idiot.
 
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Revisiting this issue again today. I've noticed over the months that when my TJ has sat for a few days, and especially when it's been humid or raining, I get this thunking noise when I start out driving, and pressing on the brakes will also cause this noise. But down the road a mile or so, the noise goes away, and I cannot recreate it. The Jeep, inexplicably, needs to have sat for a good while, and the temperature needs to be lower.

Recently, returned from a trip to Portland, and the TJ had sat for a week. The thunking noise has returned with a vengeance, and it has been cool and raining since I returned. Today, it warmed up again and the sun came back out. You guessed it, the noise, while apparent while driving to the gym this morning, and part of the way home, disappeared again after it warmed up.

My sneaking suspicion is the front axle u-joints, but I have checked those and there is no movement in those that I can find. Does anyone have a way to check axle u-joints to see if they are going bad?

Addition - it does not seem to be the driver's side, but more from the passenger side front.
 
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