I brought my car to a shop recently to have the rear clunking noise diagnosed on my first gen Solara. I left with more questions than answers. Before looking at it, the mechanic said "9/10 it's the swaybar" but then after driving it and putting it up on the hoist he said "it's probably this front(of the two rear) lateral control arm, there is a little bit of play where it meets (the subframe in the middle, or whatever). If that doesn't fix it, the struts are bad."
My question is, I got under the car too, and there is a TINY bit of play where the inner end of the rod attaches under the car. Would this even produce an audible noise, especially at the low speeds it is usually heard? I don't want to spend all day/a couple hundred bucks only to realize the crappy Monroe struts on TRD lowering springs are bad and are making the noise.
Edit: just went outside, and pushed straight down on all four corners of the car. The front end can hardly be pushed down at all; the suspension is TRD springs on TRD struts, possibly original (110k miles on the car), and the rear is TRD springs on Monroe shocks, and both sides can be pushed down at least twice as far as the front end. There are no noises when I do this, however. Is that indicative of bad shocks, or just softer struts meant for OEM replacement?
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