Are you familiar with the rapid clicking or crunching sound a worn outer CV joint makes? If you are, is this sound you're hearing now considerably different? If you're only hearing a few, randomly-spaced pops, a sloppy lower ball joint or a very badly worn strut could be the cause.
To find a noisy strut, the car can't be raised on a hoist or jacked up so the suspension is hanging by the strut. Doing so would bring the strut to the end of its travel and hide the looseness. You can raise the front end a little if you need to to get your hands over the tire, then tug in and out on the top of that tire. If you can see and feel the wheel move, the strut is really badly worn. To identify more subtle wear, poke a finger under any dust cap, then over the top of the strut body, and just in far enough that your fingertip touches the shaft where it comes out of the body. Now tug in and out again on the tire. You have to be careful when doing this because if you cause the car body to raise and lower a little, it can give the impression there's sideways movement in that shaft. It's that sideways movement you're feeling for. That's the indication the shaft is knocking back and forth. Most commonly you'll hear that once when you turn hard enough to cause that tire to tip away from the turn, then again when you straighten out. Multiple pops would typically be heard when driving over bumpy roads, but turning would put a force on the strut that would stop multiple pops.
With strut suspension systems, the lower ball joint is not a load-carrying joint. As such, you can check them for movement with the car jacked up. My preferred method is to first try to turn a wheel / tire left and right lightly, by hand. If you feel clunking, look for a worn tie rod end. If that seems okay, do the same thing, but with a lot more force. The wheel will act like a lever allowing you to push and pull on the lower ball joint. If you feel the clunking now, you've found a worn ball joint, but if you don't feel any clunking, that is not conclusive. You still need to watch the joint from underneath as you try to move it with a pry bar.
Control arm bushings cause a lot of trouble now since the engineers are using a softer rubber compound for better ride.quality. The best way to identify these is to have the car raised up just a little, with the tires sitting on turntables on a drive-on alignment hoist. Supporting the car on a jack removes most of the stress on the bushings and lets them be moved around easier with a pry bar. The amount of movement you find is a judgement call. Rubber is supposed to allow the control arm to move a little to absorb road shock, but not enough to allow much change in the alignment angles. Typically, if you have a clunking noise caused by a bushing, the wear and movement will be pretty obvious that is the cause.
Don't overlook a loose brake caliper. Worn or deteriorated rubber parts of the mounting hardware can cause that. The best clue here is the noise will stop when you hold light foot pressure on the brake pedal. The same thing can happen when brake pad anti-rattle clips or hardware is missing or broken.
Here's links to a couple of articles that might give you more ideas:
https://www.2carpros.com/articles/symptoms-of-a-bad-cv-axle-joint
https://www.2carpros.com/articles/popping-noise
Please keep my updated on your progress.
Saturday, October 19th, 2019 AT 6:53 PM