About 15 years ago I replaced all of the link arms on my 7. I did not replace the Watt linkage (just ordered all of the replacement parts tonight) at that time. I do not drive my 7 more than a thousand miles per year. The past couple of years whenever I hit big joint strips, the backend of the car makes a loud clunk.

I have checked the bolts on all of the links and everything is nice and tight.

Today I took it to the car wash. First I went to the Self Service wash and spent a lot of time spraying the underside of the car to clean it off nicely. After that I took it to the Automatic wash and took my time going across the underside spray bar. Driving home I noticed that the loud clunk was not there. By the time I got home the loud clunk was coming back.

Sort of leads me to believe that I need to lube some of the rear suspension linkage.

Any thoughts as to what needs to be lubed?

Thanks.

 

The bolts may be tight, but have you given the links a good shake?

 

Yep. The links have been pulled and pushed on.

 

Just a thought, but is your rear bumper tight? Not sure how FB's attach, but had a clunk in an SA once and it turned out I needed to tighten the bumper shocks where they attach to the body in the rear hatch area. Two small compartments in the rear deck floor, covered by small plates.

 

Banzai,
That sounds like a good place to look, just went out and tried to see if the bumper moved. No luck, but I will check out the mounting points for the shocks this weekend.

 

Had some spare time this evening, so I checked the bumper shocks. The FB does have the small bumper compartments, the nuts were still nice and tight. Bumper did not move even with a bunch of pushing and pulling.

I will have to put the car back up on some ramps and look to see if the exhaust is hooked up correctly and does not have any of the mounting points broken.

 

When that happened to me I had to replace the rear shocks. Seemed to solve the problem!

 

Thanks CMorrow.

I went ahead and ordered a pair of shocks and we shall see if that takes care of the issue.

 

Fingers crossed!

 

How to resurrect a thread.

I replaced the shocks for the bumper but was still hearing clunking and was not driving it much recently. However I drove it to go to my office a week ago and this time I heard a clunk coming from the frone right corner of the car a couple of times.

That Saturday I put the car up on the Quick Jacks (awesome peice of equipment by the way), and started pulling on suspension and syeering bits on the front of the car. The idler arm moved way to easily as the bushings were none existant.

Ordered a new set from Mazdatrix and installed them today, and went for a test drive.

I figured that the clunk from the front end would be gone, but the clunk from the back end was gone also.

It seems that the clunk from the idler arm was sounding like it was on the back end also.

 

Moog used to make a really nice idler arm that you could grease with a gun. I've had that on mine for years now. Too bad they still don't make them.

 

I did look for the Moog, but could not find any real quick. Either way I have the Mtheory Rack & Pinion Steering kit waiting for a vacation week so it can be installed on the 7.

 

Check the rubber hangers for your exhaust. My car kept making a clunk during low acceleration and shifting. After inspecting underneath the car, i was able to pinpoint it to the rear exhaust hanger being broken. The pipe section that goes over the rear axle was hitting up against the stabilizer bar.

 

I will look at that, as I still have a thump coming from the back end.