HI

I recently noticed that my focus was making a clunking noise the second i turned into a right hand corner, I assumed that this was a track rod end and I'd get round to changing it soon.

But when checking the wheel bearing on the driver side... which is also knackered. I thought i'd check the passenger side. only to be greeted by a regular clunking noise, sounding like its coming from inside the engine bay.

I ruled out the gearbox because surely it would make the noise regardless of which wheel is spun, its not the wheel bearing. Could it potentially be a diff bearing? though again it sounds nothing like bearing.

And one last thing it seems to improve when slowing down ie load on the driveshafts is reversed.

I'm new to the car so maybe someone more experienced with focuses (foci?) than me knows better.

Car is a 2000 mk1 1.8 petrol

Thanks :)

First of all, Welcome to the Forum.

It could be anything on the front end, CV, bushes, track rods/ends, suspension top mounts etc..

A decent mechanic should be able to suss it out reasonably easily.

thanks for the reply :)

Its definitely not the suspension. by testing it, I mean I jacked one front wheel up and put in fifth letting the engine spin the wheel on idle.

I don't believe in sending cars to a mechanic haha

The thing is that if it's the top mounts it will probably only do it when the wheels are fully loaded and when acceleration and braking makes the suspension pull forward and backwards.

Like i said its definitely not the suspension. The noise is caused by the rotation of the wheel alone, no lateral, longitudinal or vertical forces, just the engine spinning the wheel. I'll investigate properly tomorrow.

thanks anyway :)