Hey all, I have a 91 carry and a few months ago it made a noise that made me think I had a flat, or there was a bag, or some other road debris caught up in my front wheel. Kind of a whomping noise that was directly tied to how fast I was going. It went away after I drove for a few minutes and my brain was happy to side with the debris theory. Fast forward to now and it started making it again, but it still comes and goes, but frequently. If I hit a bump in the road it'll start making the noise, hit another bump it goes away, etc. Tomorrow I was planning on taking this wheel off and starting to dig around, but my background is motorcycle mechanics and I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking for here. Would appreciate any advice anyone has to help guide me towards finding the issue.
Do the check for loose ball joints or tierods. For loose ball joints with the car in the air, grab the wheel at 12 oclock and 6 oclock and see if theres unusual movement. For tierods grab the wheel at 3 oclock and 9 oclock and check for play. Also on these you need to check the large steering yoke as the bushings tend to wear and cause death wobble and such. Have someone crank on the wheel while you are under the front end looking at the yoke, if you see looseness or wiggling around its axis then the bushing probably is bad.
Hey t_g_farrell, thanks a lot for that! Jacked it up, there was some slop at 3 and 9 and sure enough the jam nut on the tie rod was loose. Tightened that up and drove around and it all seems good.
Following up, that wasn't the fix unfortunately. The jam nut was loose on that tie rod, but this noise comes and go making it hard to reason about. Over the past few days it's been happening more frequently and today I managed to capture an audio recording of it: http://sndup.net/mm4d It last for about ~6 seconds and then just goes away in the recording. Anyone have any clue what could be the cause of this?
