Why Does My Car Clunk When I Go Over Bumps?

Why does my car clunk when I go over bumps? Welcome to Mercie J where compassion and craftsmanship come together. I’m Rick Smith.

Most of the time when we have a clunk noise when we go over bumps it's typically something in the suspension. We have swaybar links, we have tie rod ends, we have struts and shocks, we could even have a loose bolt on say a sub frame or we could have an engine or transmission mount that’s shifting. There's a lot of different things under there that can make that clunk.

So what I see unfortunately, is a lot of people who spend a lot of money putting different parts on the car to try to solve it and it gets really expensive and really discouraging. So it's really important to actually get it diagnosed to determine what it is, because there's so many possibilities I can't answer that in a video like this.

I'd have to actually experience your car and then do some testing. So one of the ways that it can be done is there’s something called chassis ears and a technician can put these microphones at different points on the car and listen with the headset and move those around until he or she isolates the noise.

One of the things we really like to do here at the shop is we like to use an oscilloscope. An oscilloscope basically hooks to a laptop and it paints a picture. And so what we use, is these are, I believe they’re called Piezo Wafers, and I made these tools.

And these would be used also in like audio equipment. So say you have a party place and when the music beats you have lights that match that. And so these would sense those sound waves, those pressure waves, to help turn on those lights and make all that atmosphere.

The same thing happens with these when we clamp them onto the parts of the car. When that clunk happens, then it actually sends a signal to my laptop and I can tell the intensity and the frequency of that noise. And so as I can move those around until I have isolated where the noise is exactly. So it's a little time consuming to do that, so it does cost a little money. But in the long run, it saves a ton of money because you narrow it down the first time and you get it right.

So I hope this has been informational to you, and until next time, safe travels and blessings to you.

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