first some background. the car is a 98 gsr with an ls engine in it. the car is lowered with generic coilovers and stock shocks. an alignment was recently done and the wheels were balanced. the wheels are 17's. the suspension was torn all apart before because i bought the car as a theft recovery and the theives screwed up the front left suspension pretty bad and stole the back brakes (the car had drums on when i got it). i replaced the brakes all around with brakes that i took off the wrecked 99 ls. the steering wheel doesn't shake at all and the car drives straight. i've looked underneath the car and everything looks normal; nothing seems loose and balljoints all look ok (no grease coming out). i have what seems like 2 separate problems.

one problem i'm having is that i'm hearing noises from the front left suspension. when i hit gutters in the road while going straight i hear a pretty loud clunk, and when i take turns while driving on bumps (such as pulling into a parking lot) i hear pops. the pops and thumps can be felt through the floorboard.

the other problem is that i'm having a wierd vibration while driving. when driving straight down the road the vibration can be felt for 3-4 seconds, with about 1 second of silence, then 3-4 seconds of vibration again. it seems like taking right turns makes the vibrations go away, while taking left turns makes it worse. the parts car hit a curb during the accident with the back right wheel and the control arms got bent. i ended up putting the hub/brake assembly on the gsr. i'm thinking maybe the bearings are bad? there isn't any whining, which is what i heard is a sign of bad bearings. could the back right bearing be bad with no whining?

any help would be much appreciated

 

well your clunking sound is due to your bushings. you most likely need control arm bushings...bushing kits from autozone are cheap and are pretty good, have it installed professionally, it is a pain in the ***.
your vibration could be either a bad alignment, bad bearing, those type of things..a bearing could go bad with out a whining sound i guess..but it usually does make a sound...i am going to guess that your vibration is from a bent rim or a wheel that isnt balenced properly

 

i just had the wheels balanced today so that can't be the source of the vibration. balancing them didn't affect anything at all, though i was told the front wheels were a little off. the alignment was done a couple weeks ago and according to the printout everything is now good except for the camber.

i just remembered something; the inner boot on the driver side axle has a bad seal and is throwing out a tiny bit of grease, the seal broke during the accident. could that be a source of vibration? how exactly would i go about checking for bad bushings?

 

The axle is most likely the cause of the vibration. If it's spitting out grease, swap it out and see what happens.

 

possible slightly bent axle?

 

well, i changed out the axle and that hasn't affected the vibration. looks i'll be changing the bearing where the wheel was hit on monday.

 

i got a used trailing arm for the back right and that seems to have finally fixed it. drives MUCH smoother and quieter.