Why does my Car Clunk when I Turn?

Today we’re working on a 2009 Chevy Cobalt and what we are experiencing some creaking, crunching, clunking noises from the front of the vehicle. A lot when you’re turning, sometimes when you go over bumps. So I thought I’d give you a little information on how we actually pinpointed what was the actual noise. Welcome to Mercie J auto care where compassion and craftsmanship come together. I’m Rick Smith, master certified technician, and my helper today is May Hay. We were fortunate on this one and that the noise would make it very consistently. On most of your vehicles, on all your vehicles really, you have a number of joints in the suspension and steering. Kind of like your knees or your hips or your shoulders where you have a socket and a ball and that’s what allows things to move around. So any one of those joints, ball joints, inner tire rod ends, outer tire rod ends, different links, all those things could make noise. What we did on this one (and you might be able to do it at home if you do-it-yourselfer) is we disconnected the outer tie rod ends so that the steering was separate from the two suspension components, our struts and our ball joints. What we found is if we turn the steering back-and-forth, it was quiet, so that ruled out our inner and outer tie rod ends and our steering rack. But when we move the suspension independently, we have what are called sway bar links and the joints in these links are kind of like what I was just talking about, like your shoulder or your knee and they were creaking. So we replace these and took care of that. We also found that a ball joint was worn and it was not very safe so we took care of that and then aligned the suspension got it all set to go. I hope this is this video has been informational to you and it till next time, safe travels and blessings to you.