Rear end clunk ONLY on hard corner
 

I have a sound coming from the rear end, so I searched the forums and it seems almost everyone describes a clunk from the rear when breaking, accelerating or stopping but few mention experiencing it on cornering.

My clunk ONLY occurs on hard cornering. It never happens on bumps of breaking or acceleration. It sounds like a rubber mallet hitting an oil drum. It is one single 'dom' sound every time the car reaches full load in a hard corner.

I am looking for place to start.

Which bearing or arm is the most likely cause?

which side does the clunk come from?
right or left turns?
at the start of the turn / when first turning the wheel or some other time?

jack up each wheel and push pull at the top and bottom and then side to side. do you feel movement in the wheel?

I hear it on both L and R turns. I can't tell whether it comes from the Left rear or Right rear, but I think more-so the Right.

I jacked it up last year when it started happening and there wasn't much play in the wheels maybe 1-2mm, (it is kind of hard to tell because the whole car kind of moves when you are tugging that hard).

The house I am moving into next week has a hydraulic hoist so I will be better able to better test these things.

1-2mm is all it takes. Which direction?

You don't really need to tug hard. You aren't trying to arm wrestle it. What you are looking for is play and movement on the horizontal and vertical planes.

similar issue on rough road and on right turning.. it was the ball joint from the toe links. Cant guarantee it is the same but they fail quite often (mine was only 3-4k miles old from factory)

my Fd made a noise like that on lefts, it turned out the muffler could slide out of the hanger...

toe link?

+1

My muffler didn't slide out of the hangers, but could shift around enough to make contact. A few short lengths of fuel line and worm clamps was enough to solve the problem.

^ I can't really get the same sound when I boot the hell out of the side of the muffler.
Do you think there is really enough force in cornering that it would exceed me kicking the muffler?

If the clunk is from the spherical bearing in the toe control arm this isn't something that will catastrophically fail will it. I have a time attack this weekend but have not been able to solve the issue.