Top strut mount

Only on a '76 VW Passat I had once (wot a terrible car). The upper strut-mounts were sloppy allowing the ball-bearing to move laterally (sideways) just enough to cause the front-wheel camber to go positive on fast curves,...very disconcerting, it created instant oversteer,..any way, it made no noise,..so you may be looking at something else, like a stuffed shock in the strut itself, given you describe a thumping noise.

Jason

My '98 Camry V6 developed a clunking in the front end. I checked everything in sight, including the inner mud panels for looseness. Could find nothing. It was still under warranty, so I took it in to Toyota (You got to be desperate to go to these thieves). They immediately knew what was wrong. Seems there was a lot of them comint in with broken or cracked strut upper mounts, so many that they had a big box of replacements. They put in both new mounts and it was fine. This was a case where a recall was not issued, but they would fix out of warranty if the customer complained.

"" wrote: > Dan wrote: > > Question, > > Does anyone have any idea what can go wrong with a strut > > mount? I can guess, like the rubber gets weak and the mount > stretches > > causing the thumping noise. Possible the rubber separates > from the > > inner washer. Has anyone actually seen a mount that failed? > >

I thought I had worn/broken strut mounts as there was an annoying "clunk" when going over road bumps. It turns out that it was as simple as WORN SWAY BAR BUSHINGS. These are very cheap rubber items that can be replaced in a few minutes. This seems to be a very common item with Camrys - I have replaced them on ?95s and ?99s