Hi everyone, Got a nice question for you :-) VW Passatt, 5 years old with almost 140,000 miles on the clock. Over the last 6 months it`s had a knocking noise coming from what seems to be the front offside, developing from a quiet noise to a reasonably loud mechanical clunk, which is now showing up most when decelerating (not necessarily braking) between 35 and 25mph. The noise also appears if the car is moving slowly forward and the brakes are applied, it clunks as the brakes go on.
The brakes have had new disks and pads fitted all round since this problem started. It`s been into the garage 3 times now to try and figure out what is wrong, the last time (about 2 months ago) an arm was changed as it seemed a bit loose, but this didn`t fix the problem.
The car has today passed an MOT, with the examiner being informed of the problem and asked to have a good look at the front end. The examiner is known to the garage working on the car, but I trust both of them to do a good job and tell me when work needs doing. They both know I`d rather know that something is on the way out and pay to fic it before it becomes an issue than leave it until it breaks. The garage owner is a friend who exchanges work on my car for my work on his computer, so he`s not maing money by having the car in every few months to have a look at it. Having said that he`s very quiet work wise at the moment, so if he was inclined to try it on now would be his ideal chance, and he isn`t. He`s a good mechanic, and he`s not the only mechanic I`ve had look at this - got a second opinion from someone who was as baffled as the first guy :-) )
It`s not the undertray, the car shows the same problem with it removed. The car handles fine, brakes work as they should, ABS works as it should. It`s had a whole new wheel on the front off side and the tyre changed on the front near side (unrelated, just swapping wheels round when buying 2 new tyres to get the best balance all round).
Any further suggestions on things to check? The advice I`ve had so far is to leave it to develop, but 10,000 miles in a clunking car is getting annoying now, as I`m sure you can imagine :-) But other than that, the car is excellent (and turning the radio up removes the knocking noise too :-) )
Please help me :-)