I have seen a few posts over the months from people regarding a knocking/clunking noise in the front suspension of Expeditions/Navigators so I thought I would share my experience and what I did to resolve it so that someone may find this post helpful to help diagnose/resolve their issue.

For months I had this knocking/clunking noise coming from my front suspension - no grinding, more of what felt like a thump/knock at my feet when I would hit bumps and uneven parts of road.

I replaced the lower and upper control arms (new bushings on the control arms too), inner and outer tire rods and sway bar links. None of this resolved my issue. BUT, all of these parts needed replaced as they were all original and had 150K miles on them - you could flip the ball joints on all the aforementioned parts with one finger - so I am not mad that I replaced them all.

In the end what it was is that the bearings in the drivers side front hub assembly were going bad and starting to loosen allowing play in the hub assembly which would shift as I hit bumps.

For those of you who do not know how to test for this - jack up the vehicle and grab the 12 and 6 position on the tire - if you have play up and down and the lower ball joint is intact and not moving, you probably need to replace your hub assembly. You will notice the shift coming from the center of the wheel if the hub is bad rather than the lower part of the wheel if a ball joint is bad.

I also replaced the sway bar bushings when I did the HUB assembly since they needed it anyway and I am happy to report - NO MORE CLUNK!

Hope someone finds this helpful at some point.

 

I'd like to know if it was the hubs or actually the sway bar bushings causing the clunk. We won't know for sure since you replaced both at the same time. Another member recently went through the same experience and his clunk was the sway bar end links. My mother in laws Camry had a clunk and it was the sway bar bushings. I've noticed a clunk on my 2003 and the first thing I'm doing (when I have time) is replacing the bushings and end links. I did upper control arms and loiter ball joints on the front 2 years ago.

 

I had a clunk on my 2003 and it was the end links. Took a long time to find it.

 

You're probably the one I'm thinking of!

 

It was both actually - however the majority of the clunk was from the bad hub. I test drove the vehicle after replacing the hub and while 99% of the clunk was gone, there was still a slight knock/clunk. Replaced the sway bar bushings after that initial test drive and all was good.

 

Great follow up, thanks!