Strut mount problem??

My car is a 2000 Sunfire GT. I have been having a bit of a front end problem since about July last year. It used to clunk when I turn and when I let go of the wheel after turning, it will roll back to a point about 1/8th around and it will stop and not come all the way around. It no longer clunks very often, but the wheel still doesn't return to centre properly. Lately I have been having other problem with it too like the turning is not as responsive, especially at highway speeds. The steering feels looser than it should be. Now what I am finding really weird about this is that my alignment never seems to be consistent. Some days it will pull to the right, others to the left, and sometimes not at all.

Any help diagnosing this problem would be greatly appreciated. I am hoping to fix this myself and soon. Thanks again.

Anyone??

I have the same problem....

So I changed the drivers side strut mount and the problem persists... Does anyone have any suggestion for what else it could be?

Possibly a CV joint about to let go. Check underneath the car and check the CV boots to see if they are torn open.

have you pulled wrack boot's back and look at the teath????

No I have not checked the CV's yet. I will have to do that. Is there much of a chance of one of these parts letting go on me? Also hat is the proper way to check them?

yes anything can come loose even c'v joint's i'd take care it right away. when checking look at the boot's usually it's the outer on these another way is to take it some where and go into where you can make a left turn and go in a circle if i's clicking
bad cv and then go ito a right turn in a circle you hear clicking there on that side then that side is bad also. but like i put on here before. and did u check your rack boots or rack ????????

No I have not checked any of those things... I am hoping the car is good enough to get me home. I won't be able to check it this weekend and I am kinda at a spot 2 hours away from home with no shop where I can work on stuff. Thanks for the suggestions I will be trying to take care of this ASAP.

So 3 strut mounts later I have discovered that the main part of my steering problem appears to lie in the steering gear. Yes that is correct 3 strut mounts later. How this happened was I fixed the drivers side strut mount last week and it turns out that we installed it wrong. My alignment was all right and everything seemed to be better after we finished the job. But things still seemed to be a bit off so I put the strut mount on the other side on my list of things to be done soon. So I drove the car a bit the next couple of days and everything seemed to be fairly good. Things still seemed to be a bit off so I put the strut mount on the other side on my list of things to be done soon.

The weekend came and I drove down to see my gf who is going to university 200 km away. At the start of the trip everything seemed to be fine. But the way the car handled kept getting progressively worse as I made my way to her place. I thought this was odd, surely we installed the mount properly... Except for one little thing I thought could have been the problem.I thought the strut to body nuts were too loose so I bought a super cheap socket set and cranked on them for a bit. So of course to continue with the super awesome luck I was having I broke one of the f'ing things off.

Well that was the icing on the cake my handling/steering was totally off and I couldn't bring myself to trust my car to bring me all the way home. I ended up getting my Dad to come down with his truck and trailered my car home. So now here I am with my strut mount problem fixed but my steering problem remains... I think I will let the mechanic do this one for me.

Does anyone know if it would be a smart choice to buy a used steering gear?

Anyways that is my rant.

P.S. It turned out that the problem with how we installed the strut mount was my friend misreading the book for the torque specifications for the strut damper shaft nut it was supposed to be 52 FT-lbs and he told me it said 52 in-lbs.

well changing struts you will have to get it aligned
because the camber,toe and shold be checked. because it's 1 in a thousand that go back in alignment right where it suppose to be.. and also have them check sterring axes inclanation also..good luck..

scrapper........

Thanks for the luck and the help. The mechanic told me today that the could not find any problem with the rack and that I need an alignment. Which it will be getting tomorrow. The alignment seemed to be fine on it because it was running pretty straight when I let go of the wheel. I was told that it needed to be done because the left front wheels camber is off. Thanks again for the help.

It used to clunk when I turn and when I let go of the wheel after turning, it will roll back to a point about 1/8th around and it will stop and not come all the way around. It no longer clunks very often, but the wheel still doesn't return to centre properly. Lately I have been having other problem with it too like the turning is not as responsive, especially at highway speeds. The steering feels looser than it should be. Now what I am finding really weird about this is that my alignment never seems to be consistent. Some days it will pull to the right, others to the left, and sometimes not at all.

Any help diagnosing this problem would be greatly appreciated. I am hoping to fix this myself and soon. Thanks again.

It sounds a lot like you need to look at the upper strut bushings. The spring portion of the strut sits against this in the upper wheel well, and when it starts to break down the spring doesn't slide nicely. It will stick and release, stick and release, and when it does release, you will hear a clunk. And when you let go of the wheel it won;t go all the way back to center as the struts are being kept from moving back into the center position nice and smoothly.

A good way to check is to crank the wheel from one side all the way to the other side while you aren't moving, and if it clunks really bad, much worse than when you are moving, I'll pretty much guarentee that's what it is.