'95 camry: clunking sound under the hood when braking?? any possible causes??

[Stephen311]

hi all. im 16 and yesterday bought my first car, a '95 camry. well as i was driving it home i noticed that whenever i would pull up to stop signs/stoplights, right before i came to a complete stop i would hear a clunking noise under the hood as if something was jostling into something else. i was pretty concerned about it but later my dad and i noticed a motor joint was badly shattered. so, we replaced the motor joint last night and tried braking again a couple times and the clunking had stopped. but unfortunately, today on my way home from school i noticed the subtle clunking again when i was braking . i was just wondering if anyone else had encountered a similar problem or had any possible information as to what could be wrong with it. i would take it to a toyota mechanic, but of course they seem to only want to make money off of my ignorance (they tried to sell us a motor joint for 70 dollars that we later bought at auto zone for 37, and they tried to replace another joint that wasnt even broken, and after labor it would have cost 358$). i should mention that the struts on the car also seem to be worn out and need to be replaced, maybe that could be causing the clunking noise??? any info would be greatly appreciated, im praying that it's not a serious problem and the sooner i can diagnose it the better. thank you.

[Joe W]

This is generally not a good sign.
Jack up the front of the car and move the wheel up and down,side to side and try to duplicate the sound.This should point you in the right direction.

[gator2764]

Did you look at the bottom motor mount and the top one (also called a dog bone)? I had to replace both of mine. Both were eay to replace. I had to take a hole saw and drill a 3 inch hole in the plastic underpan to get to the bottom one though.

[Parmenides3]

Was the car sitting for a while before you got it? The problem could be as simple as pits or other irregularities in your rotors.