My 2005 coupe has ~137k miles on it now and I am replacing the front lower ball joints and lower control arm bushings. I'm replacing the ball joints to hopefully cure the last of the front end clunks that I have. The clunking is over bumps, and very pronounced when coming to stop at slow (parking in the garage) speeds. From what I read elsewhere, that seemed to point to the lower ball joints.

I went with the Mevotech lower ball joints and have ordered up the Megan Racing bushings. I didn't want to go with urethane bushings as this is a street car, and although I may try a track day at some point, I wanted to keep some of the compliance in the bushings by sticking with a rubber part. The Megan Racing part seems to offer a durability improvement, while still keeping some complaince of a rubber part.

I started on the driver's side last night and one issue I ran into was that the nut for the Mevotech ball joint is not very tall, so it does not allow easy purchase for a socket or wrench. The nut sits down in the opening of the control arm, and none of my 24mm sockets will get a good grip to tighten it. I wound up haveing to use a crescent wrench and I did get it tight...but I'm thinking of taking it off and adding a stainless or Grade 5 or 8 washer underneath the nut to give a little more height and clearance so that I can tighten it down with a socket. There would still be clearance, even with a washer under the nut, to allow the cotter pin to be installed.

Has anyone else run into this clearance issue to tighten that ball joint nut?

Oh, and I decided to go with Mevotech lower ball joints after reading a bunch of threads here. I also liked that they have a grease fitting, and I would just plan to top them off at each oil change. I also have grease fittings on the Moog swaybar endlinks I installed last year - with less than 5k miles on them, I think they need grease added, as well (that will be part of this front suspension/bushing refresh). I should go ahead and top off the grease on the rear swaybar endlinks I installed at that time, too.

 

I finished replacing the lower control arm bushings and the corresponding ball joints last week and took the car for a ~800 mile roundtrip drive this weekend to visit family and friends in IL and WI. I also put new tires on the Z before the trip, too.




Unfortunately, the clunk is still there, so I will move to replacing the bushings and ball joints in the upper control arms, next. I may replace the swaybar bushings, too, while I'm at it.

 

Check your sway bar end links

 

​​​​​​@Flee0588 - I will check those, again, but I replaced them with new Moog parts <5k miles ago. I can make the noise occur easily enough if I press and release the brakes at low speed (a crawl), if that helps point to a known source. It will also occur when I roll up against the 2x4 have on the floor in my garage to mark my parking position. I'm trying to figure out a way to induce those forces while being able to observe the suspension components. I think I'll be able to figure out something with my Race Ramps and wheel chocks, and I'll have to enlist a second person to crawl the car forward while I observe.

 

That clunk could also be attributed to the front anti-swaybar endlinks. Replace and/or upgrade.

 

I will double-check them. As I mentioned in the post just before your reply, the fronts have newer Moog swaybar endlinks on them (less than 5k miles). That doesn't mean they weren't bad out of the box, though. I'll report back over the weekend, hopefully. I have a couple of other vehicles needing attention (AC system issues) before I get to the Z again.

 

reading fail. sorry bout that. I had the issue with my OEM endlinks. Fixed with SPL's. Good luck.

 

I did try and get a look under the car this weekend, but I couldn't isolate the noise. It does seem to be more from the wheel well area and not from the swaybar mount bushings as those are further forward and towards the middle of the car.

What about tie rod ends? But then I would think I'd feel slop or clunkiness in the steering.

 

Have you checked the compression rod ball joint and bushing?

 

@GreyZ , after searching and reading some more on this clunk, I think that's where I'm heading next - replacing the compression rod arms (since just the ball joints for those arms are not available separately, though the bushings are).

 

An update for the evening: I was able to get my son's help and isolate the noise to the compression arm ball joints. I had him apply torque to the wheel through the lug nut - I had a 21mm socket on a 3' breaker bar and had him apply just enough pressure to rock the car back. That was enough to make the noise and then I reached around behind the wheel to feel for the movement that corresponded to the noise. The compression rod arm was the only thing moving, and there was more motion at the balljoint/knuckle end than at the bushing/body end. The bushings actually still looked rather solid (not like some in pics I've seen in my research).

I have the Mevotech replacement compression rod arms on hand, but I'm going to wait to install these until I have my 2-post lift installed and ready. I have it here, I just need to get it done and in place. After jacking up the front end and putting it on stands, there's just not enough room to do it easily. Not that it can't be done that way, but it will go much smoother working at it on the lift.

 

I need to build a shop. Have the property space just need to pay everything off prior to building the bloody thing.

What kind of 2 post lift did you go with? You have to do the install or does the company come in to make sure everything is copacetic?

 

I found a good, used Mohawk A-7 lift. I am installing it myself. All in (lift, installation parts, extending an electrical circuit over to it and reconnecting the hydraulics between the two posts) it will have run me about $3k.

There are lower-cost lifts out there, but after my research, the quality of a Mohawk was regarded as a class above the rest (ball bearing rollers for the lift carriages instead of plastic sliders, 3/4" thick steel for the lift columns, availability of parts, etc.).

So, even going with a used Mohawk vs. a new "other" seemed the best path. I did get a good price on my lift, though. The typical listings for an A-7 when I was looking priced them between $2k and $4k. From my understanding, they are about $6k new.

I did find companies that would install the lift for you for between $450-600. However, if electrical work was needed to get power to the lift, that would be extra.

Since you're starting with a blank slate, I would follow the lift manufacturer's recommendation for the slab and the location of the columns. In my case, the location of the relief cuts in my slab (done by the previous owner of the house) limited the choices of where I could locate my columns and still provide enough distance between the closest mounting bolts to the relief cuts.

Also, one more tip that was offered was to be sure and drill the mounting bolt holes all the way through the slab. That way, if you need to remove the lift for any reason, you can just punch the anchors through into the ground and fill the holes. Or, if you mess up on a bolt when installing, you just punch it through and put in another one.

 

Just to close this out, I spent the day yesterday replacing the compression rod arms and front & rear underbody braces on the Z. The new ball joints in the new compression rod arms did the trick and the front end clunk is gone! I put about 170miles on the Z today and it was great! So quiet and tracking so smooth!

Some pics of the work yesterday are below. The rust was really bad on the front and rear underbody braces. This was after 142k miles and the previous owner driving this Z through MI winters. The rear underbody brace folded in half like a piece of paper! I used new braces from Ultra Racing. The compression rod arms were from Mevotech (via RockAuto). Two bolts (one in the front and one in the rear) had to be drilled out and have the threads re-cut. Fotunately, I had extra bolts that I had taken from a "parts Z" that I grabbed some items from last Summer - it was a low mileage convertible that had never seen Winter, so I pulled a bunch of extra bolts to have on-hand for things like this...wish I had grabbed more of them!

 

This is next on my to do list.... and I dont look forward to it! Nice lift

 

Thanks - I had wanted a lift for ~20yrs now, and finally found one and finished installing it last month!

You'll be so happy to have the "clunk" gone, once you've replaced those compression rod arms, though! Good luck!

 

An update: it's been about 16k miles since I installed those Mevotech compression rod arms...and I think the clunk is starting again 🥺

I was hoping for more life out of them, but it looks like I'll be replacing these again, soon.