Front end rattles?

[dodge man]

What is the best way to determine where rattles are coming from? Any secrets? I finally fixed a rattle in my wifes car. The car has about 56,000 miles on it, and I think the rattle had been there since about 30,000 miles. We had it looked at under warranty, and it was never fixed.

I had replaced one of the tie rod ends twice and the other one once over the last 2 years. This became obivious when you jacked the car up and let the suspension hang. This didn't fix the rattle. I then replaced the sway bar end link last night and this fixed it. It was pretty obvious this was the problem once it was off the car, but you couldn't really tell when it was on the car. The rattle had gotten so bad it was almost constant. The quality of the front end components on this car are a disapointment. The replacement parts are much better and actually have grease zerks on them. I have observed this on other vehicles also, not just Chrysler, that the front end components are undersized.

The car is a 2005 Chrysler 300C and I was going to post this under an old thread I started a couple of weeks ago but it had been shut down. As it sits, we may keep the car a little longer.

 

[skipmarcy]

Back in the 1980's when I was working in the trade they advertised what I think was called the "Sonic Ear" for this. It was a noise/vibration sensing unit that had several transducers that you could place on a vehicle and plug into this unit that sat on the seat and if I remember right it had LEDs to indicate noise and/or vibrations. I never spent the bucks to buy one so I can't say how well they worked, I would think with today's electronics there would be a decent quality product like this at a more than reasonable price out there somewhere. I did buy this one electronic tool back then that would sense vacuum leaks and bearing noises etc. and give a LED readout as to the intensity of the problem - it worked OK to some degree but I thought it was no better than a stethescope for bearing noises and no better than choke spray or LP gas for finding vacuum leaks. Something like this today should only cost about as much as a can of choke spray given the type of electronics it is and be super-sensitive. Good luck in your search !!