Clunking sound on rough roads
 

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has complained about this issue. Our '98 LX has clunking noises emanating from the front end whenever going over bumps and washboards. I shook the wheels to check for bad ball joints and wheel bearings and they checked out fine. I did a visual inspection for worn bushings, leaky or damaged struts, bad sway bar links, etc., and everything seemed pretty tight. The only thing I noticed was that the struts were damaged in that the boots from the tops of the towers were either completely separated or close to that point. The tie rod ends twist a little, but I would think that that is normal for flexibility in the suspension. I am at a loss. Any thoughts?

My '00 LX makes the same clunking noise. Like mine, it sounds like a worn out strut and/or strut mount bushing.

Push down/pull up on the fender over the front tires - can you hear the noise?

Some of the 6th gen Accords (98-02) had an issue where the front subframe rusts out on the pass side about where the ac drain tube is.

Yikes. I've heard about that happening. I'll have to take a look at that area in the next day or two. I tried rocking the front of the car up and down at both fenders, but no noise resulted.

Got the car up on a lift yesterday and found that the passenger side sway bar bushing is split and is a little loose. I'm going to go ahead and replace the bushings and the endlinks and see what happens. The subframe is solid and in good shape, so I'm really happy about that.

Also, I think I found the A/C drain, but I want to be sure I'm right before I run a tube or hose off of it. It's a plastic tube that sticks out of the passenger side firewall about 1/2-5/8 of an inch, and it's above the subframe and directly underneath a vertically-mounted canister of some sort - not entirely sure what it is. The tube's outer diameter is about 5/8 of an inch. Am I correct?

Look for the evaporator housing Forward & low in the passenger footwell. At the bottom of this thing, the gasket #20 is pressed against the inside of the firewall. Use that to double-check the location of the drain tube you found.

Yep, that's it. Thanks for the help!

Update: Got the bushings replaced on both the front and rear sway bars. The clunk is gone, but now there is a bit of a rattle on bumps coming from the front. I'm going to replace the endlinks and see if that fixes it. If not, I think it may be the struts. Yea or nay?

Little bit of rattle? Make sure you rule out silly stuff like things in the glovebox or a wiring harness slapping against something because the adhesive-tape has dried up.

When you're driving, sounds can travel around the car in very misleading ways.

Update: I replaced the front endlinks yesterday and the rattle is gone. My wife thinks that she can hear just a little from the rear at times, but I don't hear anything. Regardless, I will be replacing the rear ones next weekend. It's so nice to have a noiseless ride that doesn't sound like it's going to fall apart!