So my 01 tiburon has made a terrible popping noise since I bought it. It occurs when you accelerate or brake. I can recreate the noise by sitting with the emergency brake on and slowly engaging 1st and it will pop only once, then to get it to pop again you must go to reverse and the pattern continues. This told me that something is "shifting" direction. Motor mount was my assumption. Then I noticed when hitting a bump in the road, the noise happened again. So finally, my dad did the whole parked clutch engage thing while I laid next to the car with an automotive stethoscope. I narrowed the noise down to the passenger side lower control are bushing. I took the bushing off and looked. It looked old...but not falling apart. As I was reassembling it, I noticed some play in it. The bushing is sort of like a motor mount looking thing. And it slides over an "axle bolt" kind of shaft with threads at the end. It appears that once the nut is tightened, the bearing shouldn't be able to move at all. So my question is, should there be a small amount of play between the bearing and that shaft? I think, when I take off, the bearing moves a fraction of an inch, giving a loud popping noise. I have attached pictures to help visualize.

 

You can buy that entire assembly with bushings for $40 shipped. Why not just replace the whole thing. The car is old enough to NEED it.

 

Agreed ^



Any motion aside from the vertical twist is very very bad. Even then the action on the bushing should be extremely tight. When I took mine off the bushing was so loose the control arm just drooped with gravity. The new one is tight enough to stand 90 degrees horizontal on it's own. Realistically at the cars age the bushing is already good to presume shot.



Likewise the new control arm includes both bushings and a fresh ball joint. Smart money is in replacing that entire piece.

 

^^ I 100% agree with the above except I recommend replacing both sides at the same time. Its only a matter of time before the other side does the same thing..

 

There is a lock washer and a regular washer between the mount and the nut and once tightened that mount should not be able to move.



When I replaced mine, I made sure to put the bushing on but didn't torque the nut until I had the weight of the car sitting on the control arm.



The way I did it in my garage was to hand tighten all the bolts for the control arm and then placed a jack under the control arm ball joint.



Make sure you don't crush the ball joint and then I disconnected the sway bar end link and jacked the control arm up until it starts to lift the car off the jack stands and that should be similar to ride height.



Then tighten all the control arm bolts to their torque specs so it applies the proper preload on the rubber bushing.



You might want to get an alignment afterwards if stuff was loose.