When I'm going round sharp corners slowly I get some clunking coming from the front of the car. It sounds more like it's coming from the front right, but it could be an illusion. I initially thought it was the driveshaft as it sounded related to the rotation of the wheels, so I fitted a new one; however, the noise is still there. I've also removed the suspension strut examine the top mount, but that doesn't seem to have any play in it, and rotates cleanly and quietly (I didn't remove the top mount as my spring compressors couldn't squish the spring enough to trust it). The wishbone, droplink and ARB bushes look OK, and don't seem to move excessively when wiggled.

So does this just leave the diff as a suspect, or could it be something else? I ought to get a spare pair of ears to listen from outside of the car to try an locate the sound more precisely.

The car is a 2005 blobeye WRX wagon with about 105k miles done.

 

I had similar symptoms on the rear of mine, turned out to be a wheel bearing, didn't make any whining noise when rotating only clunked on full turn, I didn't catch it in time and ended having to change the whole hub.

Chris.

 

I'm not getting any whirring either, hence me not considering the wheel bearing. Was there any obvious movement or noise when you wobbled the wheel when it was jacked up?

 

There was slight movement in the wheel when jacked up, but it had to be in the right place, if you rotated wheel slightly it would disappear. My local garage tried pointing it out to me as it was going to fail mot but when I asked them to show me they couldn't replicate it, so it passed! The bearing/hub failed about 500 miles later...yours may well be something different but the symptoms sounded familiar.

Chris.

 

I got someone to listen to the car while standing outside while I drove past them, and they reckoned the sound is coming from the rear left, rather than the front right. So either the acoustics from inside of the car are deceptive, or the rear is also bad. I might stick some microphones down there to have a closer listen.

Just been checking youtube videos for bearing removal guides. Looks like I need to buy some tools to add to my collection.

Are there any makes (or retailiers) of bearings to avoid?

 

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to do the repair myself so was done at the Subaru dealer, which cost a bomb as had a service inc cam belt and new brake pads... Think it was about 2k all in - ouch! Look on ICP for parts (see link).

https://www.importcarparts.co.uk/parts?cat=96&sub=183&sec=385&var=39&dc=y

Chris.

 

Did you get this sorted?

 

Haven't had the time to investigate any further, but I will aim to get the whole car up in the air soon so I can rotate the wheels and have a closer listen. I did try recording the sound by placing mics under the wheel arch, but the wind noise was too much.

 

 

The diff is one of my suspects. Is there an easy way to confirm it is the problem before I start consider splashing the cash and taking it all apart?

 

 

Decided to get round to changing the top mount on the front shocks to see if that removed the noise. And lo-and-behold, it seems to have done the trick! The bearing on the front right was quite bad once I'd removed it, and left wasn't too bad, but changed it anyway. The only tricky thing about the job was compressing the spring enough to get the top mounts back in place, as there's not many turns on those spring to get a good compression on. Apart from that taking a lot longer than hoped, the rest was pretty easy.

 

Glad to hear that you found the solution.
And thanks for coming back and posting up how you fixed it as that always useful for people with a similar issue.