09 mazda5 suspension noise - what's that sound?

My 2009 mazda5 started making some pretty terrible noises. Replaced the front end links, which silenced things up for a couple of weeks. 

Clunking noise in the drivers side. Happens with any small bumps. As loud as it is, I would expect something obvious. The car only has 32k miles on it, so nothing looks really worn out. My dad looked at it, and he thinks it's bad inner tie rods. When you turn the wheel, you can feel something in there. I think he's wrong, since the noise is so loud it has to be something worse. 

Took the wheel off again to check the stabilizer bushings. They look fine to me. This feels loose, and clunky noises when it hits the ends. Could this be it? 

If it's not I'll post a video in the car. 

https://youtu.be/mzAG2f0TdTg

Wait so you had the noise problem, then replaced the endlinks, which fixed it momentarily, but now the same sound is back?

I could be wrong but I think the noise when twisting the tie rod like that is normal.

Take a good look at the big bushings on the front lower control arms.

Ps. When I did mine I just got the new control arms with bushings and ball joints already installed. Worth it since the old ball joints failed as I was removing the arms. Pretty simple to do, just have to undo the passenger side motor mount and jack up that side of the motor a bit to get the front bolt out on that side.

Strut mounts could be a suspect also.

On my Speed3 i thought the lower control arm bushings where bad, but it ended up being the sway bar frame bushing on one side. Changed them both no more noise. Mileage was 90k.

Our 2009 mazda5 had the upper drivers strut mount fail. No warning. Noise whenever shifting from park to gear, or reverse to drive. Not to mention any bump or impact. 

Have a helper do some gear changes and watch the stud that comes through the strut mount for movement. 

Ive also had inner sway bar bushing and endlinks do it 

64k on it

Meant to look at this stuff when I had ours on the lift yesterday, need to put it back up there soon and look to get a suspension overhaul parts list together.

I'd also suggest checking upper strut mounts.  Depending how bad they are, reach in and grab the spring see if you can make the noise. 

When I had my Volvo C30, which has the same suspension as the Mazda 5, I had similar symptoms. I would get a clunk from what seemed to be front right corner when hitting bumps. I checked everything in the front end: control arms, stabilizer links and bushings, tie-rods, etc... Everything seemed good. I knew that my rear trailing arm bushings were tired, but I thought it couldn't be that since those are in the back and the noise was coming from the front. I got used trailing arms from the junkyard and pressed some new bushings in. I brought the car to the local independent Volvo shop to install the trailing arms and I asked him to check the noise at the same time. He gave me the car 2 days later saying he couldn't find the noise. I was surprised, but with the new trailing arm bushings I had no more noise from the front. I don't fully understand this even today and the car is gone, but all that to tell you to check those trailing arm bushings.

After this post, I abandoned my outer tie rod suspicion and changed it to everything. bought new strut assemblies, as well as every other part I thought it could be. luckily parts are cheap for this thing. I replaced the strut assembly on one side, and as soon as I had it out I was pretty sure it was fine. test drive confirmed my suspicion, but actually made it worse since the front got tighter. great. 

took it to a shop last week to let them figure it out. left the passenger strut in the back as well as all the other parts I bought. shop called me later, they were convinced it was the other strut so they replaced it. noise was almost gone they said! it wasn't. it was exactly the same.

made another appointment with another shop for tuesday. before paying for another shop, I wanted to make a last ditch effort to fix this myself. I had the sway bar bushings already, so I went thru the super fun process of swapping those out. Really appreciate mazda absolutely burying them underneath everything to make it absolutely miserable to replace. 

went for the test drive last night, and for the first time in many weeks, it was quiet*. That drive after too many weeks of suspension banging noises, was beautiful. fixing something yourself really adds to the enjoyment too. 

*quiet minus the sound of the bumper falling off after hitting a tire shred at 70mph earlier this week. car goes to the body shop in a couple of weeks. its been a rough few weeks for this car. 

I went through a similar saga this summer on my Mazda 3 (same suspension).

Complete strut assemblies are pretty new & high quality parts (4 years, ~30k miles)

Replaced control arms & ball joints.  Ball joints were well worn and obviously loose so I expected this to solve it. – better, but still clunks

Replaced sway bar links and bushings – still clunks

Replaced wheel bearings & hubs because they had a small amount of play (which wound up necessitating a knuckle replacement as I couldn’t get the old bearings out... snap rings rusted) …… - still clunks

Tried to replace outer tie rods ends, one was not removable from the tie rod so I replaced the inners as well – this finally solved it. 

These parts had some wear as in they were not “tight” when articulating by hand, but there was also zero noticeable play in them… at least with the amount of force I could apply by hand. 

This whole thing took way too long, but at least it gave me an excuse to drive my miata every day for most of the summer

I'm so glad you solved it. This kind of thing drives me NUTS and most shops are completely unhelpful. "We didn't hear anything. Everything looks good." I'm chasing a wiring issue on my van and it's this small annoying problem that I'm gonna have to solve cause no shop will.