Why Is the Front End Of My Car Rattling

So, I'm driving around in this vehicle, and there's a lot of rattling and knocking noise in the front suspension. Let's go find out what it is. So from outside the vehicle before we raise it up just give the vehicle a shake up and down. See if you can mimic the noise. It could potentially be a bad strut or bad shock. So while you're having someone else shake the vehicle you can come over here and feel the coil springs.

See if you feel the noise or even the strut itself. Just watch your fingers. And then if you feel it in the top it's probably the strut mount. So, you can shake the vehicle with the hood open and take a look at the strut mount. There should be some movement in there, but it shouldn't be a knocking noise or anything. And that looks good right there. Now, we're gonna check for play in the front end.

What I want to do is grab the wheel with the vehicle off the ground. Just give it a shake side to side. See if there's any play. Be careful. Sometimes the steering wheel, if the steering wheel goes back and forth that might confuse you. You might think there's play but there's not. Check the outer tie rods and the inner tie rods. So while I'm shaking this side to side you're gonna see if there's a bad outer tie rod end. You're gonna see play in that. This should be fixed.

As I shake it, it's tight. Or when you're shaking this you could also see movement in the inner tie rod end. If this is moving pretty easily but this one's pretty tight. So if you saw play in there that would mean you have bad inner tie rod end. Now, I'm gonna check for play in the lower ball joint. Just shake the wheel up and down. Now don't get confused of wheel bearing play. These are greasable, packable wheel bearings. So there may be some play in there.

So, you're gonna wanna actually, physically look at the ball joint and see if it's moving while you're shaking it up and down. Another way to check this ball joint. Take some big adjustable pliers, and just see if there's any play. You can just squeeze it. There's no play like that. And take a pry bar as well, and just pry in between here and here, and just see if you have any play and that looks good.

While we're under the vehicle, we want to check the lower control arm bushings. Right here these are rubber bushings, and they do wear out sometimes. So what we can do is take a pry bar. Just give it a wiggle. Make sure you don't see too much movement there. Right there, that's not too bad. But if it was knocking or moving significantly that would be a time to replace them.

Also, check and pry from this side, and those look good. Doing the same on the backside over here. Just pry these down. Those look good. Check for any dry rot or cracking. I don't see any on this side. You can also check from the other side. See, we're starting to see a little bit of dry rot right there. So that's an indication that these will need to be replaced in the future. Realistically, that's not too bad.

This is your sway bar link, and this is your sway bar. A lot of times when these wear out these are gonna cause a rattle when going over bumps, or even a knocking noise. It'll sound like a knock. So what you do is grab the sway bar itself with both hands and just try to give it a wiggle up and down. And actually, this one is bad up top. You can hear that knocking noise. So there's a ball and socket in there, and the looseness is causing that to knock.

Another thing you want to check is the sway bar bushings. These wear out. They're just rubber bushings. Just grab the sway bar and give it a rock. And if you can move it physically, like that then those are bad. Now that we know where that noise is coming from we can order our parts from 1aauto.com and fix that annoying rattle. We have a rattle in the front end of this vehicle.

Sorry.

We're gonna show you what... Let me write this out. This vehicle when we're going over bumps...

I didn't do anything.

Oh, yeah. Now, I'm gonna front...

Now, we're gonna front the check end.