I have been reading for two days on here. Search after search and i havent been able to find an answer to my problem. I have been having the same issues that other people have been having with the "clunk" sound coming from the front. When i back out of my drive way its really bad. It sounds and feels like something is catching and it makes the horrible snapping sound when it gets free. It sounds like something should just break. So i took the car out the other day and just started beating the **** out of the car, slamming through the gears hoping i would break whatever the problem was so i could fix it. (Mind you the evo is not my daily driver) Well banging through the gears i heard a loud bang and the car stopped pulling. I was like damn i just broke an axle. So i put it in 4th and limped the car back to my house. I got the whole front suspension laying on my garage floor and i have not been able to find anything. The only bad thing i found was the right axle. The clamp that holds the boot on to the green side of the axle to goes into the T/C was busted and just hanging on the axle allowing the boot to slip on and off. But that happened when the car made the loud band and stopped pulling hard, cuz i could hear the "ting ting" of that clamp the whole way back home. I drained the T/C thinking maybe that was wrecked, no issues. Any good ideas on what my problem could be?

The axles spin by themselves now. I use to not be able to spin one wheel freely and now i can. they would spin together now will and the other wont. Thats why i was thinking t/c. Im gonna put two jack stands in the back tomorrow and turn the car on see what spins and what doesnt. This is really weird, with the loud bangs my car was making when i backed out of my driveway everytime i would think i would see some wear marks somewhere, and i cant find none. WTF!!!

 

You want a straight answer? Take your car to someone who knows what theyre doing! no offense, but if you cant find something, someone else probably can.

 

i'm a little confused by your post, but there are two things you could check that sometimes cause that "clunk"/"knock" noise in the front suspension.

the first is spring binding. check the grease levels in the top hat of the strut.

excuse the large picture, but it illustrates quite well what i am talking about. look at the figure in the upper left hand corner of the image marked with the 3. occasionally the grease in that top hat works it's way out, causing the spring to bind up in the perch.



sometimes this will fix your noise with just a little grease, and a bit of time for it to re lube itself.

other than that, i just had a suspicious "clunk"/"thud"/"knock" that i just tracked down about two days ago. what had apparently happened was the nut that holds the strut in to my camber plate (or top hat in case of the stock suspension) had come loose. allowing for about 1/2in of vertical play in the strut assembly.

so it's not a bad idea to check the tightness of every bolt on the strut, just in case.

if neither of those help, then i suggest you take your car to an expert and have them look at it. with what you described about your axle, you could be dealing with something alot more serious that you just can't see yet.

i do have a policy of starting with the most simple solution and working backwards to the more complex things. sometimes it saves you a good bit of effort. even if you are 80% sure it's not the problem, it never hurts to try.

if those fail, then start checking part by part. look at your bushings, look at your tie rod end, and check to see if the strut itself is blown. are you still on the OE suspension?

good luck.