2006 2wd V6 suspension noise

[ZO Runner]

Hey everyone. I have a question/issue with the bushings and stabilizers on my 2006 V6 2wd.

Every time I am driving, I am hearing loud clunking and rattling every time I hit a bump/flaw in the road. I decided to take it to Firestone to see what those geniuses could diagnose it as. They told me it was time to replace my struts (lol, yeah right) so I did a little research here to see what I could find. It sounds like a few others have experienced this same issue. A few have claimed that they replaced their sway bar bushings and their rear stabilizers and it seems to have fixed this issue. It very well might be that my struts are gone, but I figured that I would replace the bushings/stabilizers first and see if this would do the trick before I took it back to FS and had them totally replace the struts. CANNOT stand the damn noise anymore, going to replace them the second I get my hands on the proper parts.

Does anyone have any input, comments, part recommendations or advice before I proceed?

Pls help,
ZO

 

[4RunnerIdiot]

I'm literally doing the same thing tomorrow. I have a clunk in the front end that I thought was a ball joint, but replacing the LCAs and UCAs didnt fix it. My struts and shocks are also shot but I went out and checked the sway bar bushings and there is definitely vertical play in them, so it would make sense to have a clunk when hitting a bump if the sway bar is hitting the frame every time.

 

[ZO Runner]

Update for the 2 people that may be following this: replaced the mentioned parts and it didn't fix my issue. Brought it to Firestone today for them to take another look, turns out that the brilliant minds at FS forgot to put the clips back on my brakes after servicing them...

SSDD