Re: Golf - knocking noise

I had similar symptoms with my old MK3 Polo. Turned out to be dodgy ball joint. The rubber was split right through and the grease had long gone. The knocking only happened occasionally, but at it's worst (on a cobbled road) it was constant.

This problem in my case turned out to be the top bearings of the suspension strut which were shot and allowed the top of the strut to wander.

Rob Graham

Sounds like a bottom ball-joint has worn. Had exactly the same symptoms several other vehicles. Not sure if you can replace just the faulty joint or the whole wishbone.

HTH

Anthony Remove eight from email to reply.

With regard to point 2, I'd have a good look at your CV joints. I've just had to replace one of mine due to the grease departing through a split gaiter, and I didn't get the "full lock" noise to warn me. Yes, I knew the gaiter was split, but by the time I noticed it, I think it had happened well before that; I just decided to run the car until the joint needed to be replaced. When the CV joint was doing a lot of the steering for me, I guessed that its time was up.

-- David

Having had a similar problem on a fiesta at about the same mileage.

It's the lower ball joints.

This probably means the steering is out and the car will pull to one side.

You can replace just the ball-joint - not much for the part, and I think my son paid about £60 for that and an MoT (£30) on his Mk2 Jetta at a local specialist. He'd had trouble recently with rapid wear on the front tyres, which probably meant that the joint had been bad for a while.

through a

AFAICR, a split gaiter is an automatic MoT failure point.

-- David

Sounds and feels like a seriously worn bottom balljoint or wishbone to me. The reason your steering is sloppy is that the bottom of your front hubs aren't fixed as much as they should be, so are free to move around, changing your steering geometry.

Get em fixed ASAP.

Pete.