It came on suddenly. I left my house and started hearing what sounded like a bad ball joint. We live down a bumpy dirt road and it creaks a little but nothing to be too concerned about. But this was different. It was louder and sounded bad.

I crawled under to see if I could see anything obvious. Nothing felt loose. My wife turned the wheel all the way to the right, still nothing felt loose. Same to the left, I couldn't see anything that looked out of the ordinary.

I drove it for a minute trying to figure out was was going on. Strangely, or maybe because we turned the wheel all the way to each side, it seemed better for just a minute, but then it started creaking and popping again. It's almost like a metal binding sound especially over bumps. I can re-create it parked by lifting on the front, driver's side fender and getting the car to bounce but I have to really lift and get it rocking.

I've replaced all 4 shocks in the last few years and noticed a few of the ball joints needed to be replaced, but nothing terrible.

I ruled out the front left spindle and lower control arm yesterday. That's where it sounded like it was coming from, but there was absolutely no change. I had my wife drive down the dirt road and thought that maybe it could be coming from the left side. You can really hear it on both sides, or like it's coming from underneath the car rather than from one side.

So today, I changed the lower control arm on the passenger side because that ball joint looked really bad, but I didn't expect that to fix anything, and it didn't. I lifted both tires off the ground and put a jack under the spindle on each side, but lifting everything seemed to work perfect with no sound. I pulled the transmission mount and it looked good and I don't really see how it could be an engine mount. It looks like those fade but don't fail suddenly, or do they?

So I'm thinking it could be the sway bar bushings after reading through some posts here.

Looking at mine, the sway bar links actually look pretty good but the bushings on the stabilizer bar don't. With both tires off the ground, I can't move the sway bar with my hands but the bushings look shot. Maybe they are just so worn that on bumps, metal is hitting metal? I can see how that might happen suddenly.

It will take a few days to get the bushings, and being down a car hurts. Anything else I could be missing?

Thanks for reading and for any suggestions.

2006 s500 2 wheel drive. Lots of miles

 

I think you should definitely change the ball joints, I've had bad ones on my CL600, and that caused all kinds of clunking.

How are your strut top-mounts?

 

It was the sway bar end link