knocking sound in driver side wheel well

[beatybaby]

We bought a used vw certified 1999 passat wagon with @66K miles on it. There's a loud knocking sound coming from the front driver side wheel well. We've had the car in 3 times to get it fixed. The last time they tightened the sway bar and said that the noise that we heard was "normal driving noise". The knock is very pronounced and occurs at slow speeds (10-20 mph) and happens when braking, acclerating and turning both right and left. I owned a beetle prior to this and it did not make this sound so I am hard pressed to believe it's "normal noise". Please let me know and feedback possible so I can get this resolved prior to the warranty expiring.

[martin.kerr]

I think your problem is the same as the one I just had

I have a '00 passat saloon, 45k on the clock when we got it, after a while noticed a sound just like the one you described.
Took the car to our local dub dealer to no avail, went to the garage where we bought it, long story short, (don't ever buy a car from palmersville motor co. in newcastle) trading standards forced them to fix a large list of faults which we had noticed, listed with these was the knocking sound, they replaced a large ammount of the front suspension and steering components but the sound persisted.

Then out of the blue we receved a recall letter from dub themselves, aparently all the joints on the suspension have little rubber "boots" these have been splitting (rather like cv joints on old cars) and letting dirt into the joint, this breaks down the joint causing noise untill it fails!!

Before we could get our car in to get repaired the joint broke (lower left wishbone passenger side) lucky for us my wife was driving around town so there was no damage to the car but if it had happened on the motorway it would have been a different story.

Get this though!!!
The day before this happened the car had been into thornwood motors who are a dub dealer!! Lets just say I told dub customer services what I thought of thornwood.

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Try contacting dub customer services and ask if your car is covered in the recall otherwise you are looking at a VERY LARGE repair bill as the components are made from aluminium and carry the usuall dub £££ mark up!

Good Luck

and drive slowly untill you get it fixed, when the joint went on the wifes car it veered off the road and she could not steer!!

will upload pic showing one of the split "boots" to my gallery

[party dude]

hi i have 1999 1.8t and also have a knocking sound coming from the front passager wheel if yours sounds like a rolling knock [ hard to tell i know] but my local garage found the problem it was wheel bearing.on a 740000k car !!!!.but they have fixed passat,s with less milage than mine.worth checking it out . by the way it,s not really a d i y job not unless u have a big bench vice or a press. hope this helps

[beatybaby]

Thanks so much for the info.. I'll contact VW today. Thanks!

[00Psst]

You may also want to look at the CV joint. I just had to replace a front axle and cv joint and had the same clicking noise you're hearing. The first response is a bit misleading. Our cars do have independent front axles/cv joints and the recall is on the control arms. In the US the recall is just for an inspection and not for an automatic replacement. If they are bad, you get new ones but if not you keep the old ones. What you describe is more inline with the axle and not the control arms. Typically control arms and tie rods will have more of a clunking sound. If its the axles/joints, you'll hear more of a loud clicking especially when you turn the wheel.