Hunt the clunk

Yesterday evening I went round to my friend Aaron’s house so we could fit new lower ball joints to Neddy, having replaced the upper ones previously. In case I hadn’t already said elsewhere, Neddy has been making a rather disconcerting clunking noise when accelerating, and I had thought it was the upper ball joint, but replacing it made no difference. So Aaron and I did the lower ones too. And did it make any difference? Not a sausage.

It’s kind of a hard noise to describe really, especially since we’re not entirely sure where the noise is coming from. You can hear it when inside the car, but not really from outside because of the noise from the engine. This leads us to suspect that it’s not to do with the suspension or anything on the sides of the car, as you would expect to be able to hear something like that form outside. It’s a sound akin to clicking your knuckles, and happens when pulling away from stationary, or accelerating hard in first or second gear. It sort of clicks three or four times before settling down.

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