Clunking/Grinding When Turning

[KillerTofu]

Hi all,

Love my Kizashi, no problems until now.

When turning at low speed, there is a terrible rhythmic clunking/grinding from behind the front passenger wheel. No noise traveling in a straight line, or banking at 45mph. No problems with tracking. Slight clunk on speed bumps if I'm going faster than a crawl. Definitely feels like linkage.

The noise is bad enough that I won't drive it until it's fixed.

I took off the wheel, and the only thing I can find that looks out of place is this:
There didn't seem to be any play in the hub when I was removing the wheel.

If I'm not mistaken that's the tie rod end. Could that be the issue or is it supposed to be at that angle? I'm confident in my powertrain abilities, but suspension diagnosis is a bit new to me.

Thanks for any and all help.

[DiggerDerrik]

Here is what mine looks like. I didn't take the tire off. The angle of your tie rod does appear to be a bit different then mine. The noise you describe sounds to me like a bad CV joint. But I am just a weekend mechanic. I doubt this is much help but good luck

[DiggerDerrik]

Also that is with my car up on ramps. If you took that picture with your tires off on jack stands or whatever then your suspension was extended out all the way. So angles will be different.

[LPSISRL]

If you see no signs of anything rubbing, I'd look at the CV joints as well. The fact that they don't make noise unless turning is the clue. However, with that said, CV joints usually make a ratcheting or clicking sound and not clunks.

[KillerTofu]

Thanks Digger, the photos helped.

That was the problem.

They'd been slowly degrading since I bought her 2 years ago. I had noticed the change, but didn't realize it was a problem until the horrible noise. I also didn't realize how drastic the difference was until the new tie rods were in. She's on rails again.

I threw her around a few sharp turns at 35mph and she feels like she did 2 years ago.

These are the MAS tie rods from Rockauto, they seem heavy and solid. We'll see.

[DiggerDerrik]

Glad to help if I did and I commend you on reporting back to the forum with what the problem and solution actually was. People on this forum are pretty good about that. However most others are not. I don't know how many issues I've looked up in the past for other vehicles and found posts that discuss an issue but the solution is never presented. I imagine after the issue is fixed most people don't think to go back and report.

[KillerTofu]

Agreed, it's quite frustrating to find somebody who had your exact problem but there's never any update.

So it seems like when tie rods go bad on these cars they make terrible noise that sounds like both a loose heat shield and the wheel falling off. Who knew?

[eatrocks]

I wonder if mine are going bad, same thing I hear when turning at slowest speeds and going over speed bump. Though it's a very quiet noise that lasts a second.