It’s the thing that every car owner dreads — an unidentifiable sound coming from under the hood of their favorite car. That’s exactly what happened to forum user chaseperez_s197 — a low thudding sound coming from the area around his front driver’s side wheel. What could be causing a sound like the one he’s hearing? Let’s take a closer look.

A Low, Quiet Thudding Sound

If you take anything away from this week’s ForumFix, it should be that it’s a bad idea to hit a curb at 30 mph. After his curb check, chaseperez_s197 experienced a low thudding sound around his front driver’s side tire. After inspecting the wheels and the underside of the strut on that side, he was stumped. What could be causing this mysterious sound?

Possible Culprits

Users in the Mustang forum suggested a number of possible culprits, from tire damage to a damaged strut mount. It could have been a problem with the drive shaft or axel bearings that could have been damaged when the car went up and over the curb.

A trip to the Ford dealership for a routine alignment, tire balancing and rotation ruled out tire damage, rim damage and alignment problems. He even took the Ford tech with him for a drive, and the technician was stumped as to what could be causing the problem. The struts and suspension looked fine, as did the drive shaft.

Other suggestions started trickling in. Maybe it was a problem with the brake calipers, which may have also been damaged during that curb-vaulting trick. A brief inspection of the front brakes didn’t yield any answers — they looked fine and appeared to be functioning properly.

Problem Solved

So, after all his troubleshooting and replacing of parts, what did the problem end up being? It wasn’t the tires. It wasn’t the alignment. It wasn’t any of the parts in the suspension or the undercarriage.

It took a problem developing on the passenger side of his Mustang to finally puzzle out the source of the low, quiet thumping sound.

It was the wheel hub. While driving, he started experiencing the same noise and vibration from the front passenger tire. Replacing the wheel hub on the passenger side all but eliminated the problem on that side, but the noise remained on the driver’s side.

In December of 2017, chaseperez_s197 replaced the driver’s side wheel hub and as there are no more updates on this problem, we assume the rest is history and the problem was solved.

The moral of this story goes back to Sherlock Holmes: When you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains — no matter how improbable — must be the truth. Through the process of elimination, this driver was able to figure out exactly which part he damaged during his curb-jumping trick and replaced it to eliminate the noise and vibration.

We recommend avoiding curb-jumping at all costs, but if the choice is between jumping a curb and wrecking your car, by all means, jump that curb. Just keep in mind that you may have a wheel hub replacement in your future once you come to a stop.

The post ForumFix: What’s That Sound? appeared first on AllFordMustangs.