upper or lower arms
 

Are the wish bone or coffin arms usually the culprit for twitchy, wandering steering as well as the rattling over bumps. I have found many threads for diagnosis just really wondering of usual suspect for the steering issue. Car has recent road force balance, 4 wheel alignment and 4 bridgestone potenza.Thanks in advance and all smart Alick responses welcome (makes for fun interesting reading ).

Smart Alick #1.

It's usually the nut behind the wheel!! 😃

If the did an alignment then they should have checked all joints to see if anything was loose. If not, then the alignment is crap and you should it back and see what's loose.

That's nonsense.
On the 986 / 996 suspension, worn ball joints & wishbone bushes will not show any looseness when still attached to the rest of the suspension - you have to remove the offending part to get any idea of wear. You can push, pull, jack up and jump up and down on the car and it will not show any loose or worn parts. Driving over a corrugated surface is another matter.
A light rattle over roughish surfaces can be the drop links which are very easy to change, but more severe rattles can come from the wishbone or the upper or lower control arm ball joints. If you are really unlucky, the noise can be worn shock upper rubber bushes / bearings that are shot, which means removing the shocks just to check.
I chased a front suspension rattle for weeks, starting with drop link replacement, then control arms, then shock replacement with PSS9's and finally lower wishbones.
Guess what was worn - the last thing I changed, the lower offside wishbone! :confused:

Is the rattling over bumps from the front or rear?

Are both of your rear fog lights working proper?

How do you feel about those small furry animals that are basically the opposite of dogs and like to lay on soft top cars and stretch their claws on them? (I can't say that name on this site anymore)

nicecar,

over the past couple of weekends I replaced the upper control arms on the front and back of my 2003 boxster S. I have been chasing rattles, mostly at slow speeds over small bumps, for the past 12+ months. I had previously changed the sway bar drop links, checked the heat shields, and several other items. The rattles were so bad it was driving me crazy. I'm happy to say changing the upper control arms solved my problems. The bushings on the old control arms were worn. This also tightened up my steering.

I also changed the bushings on the sway bars (front and rear) but those appeared ok when I got them out. My car has 65,000 miles.

My next step was to change the coffin arms, but I didn't need to do that.

Hope you find your rattles.

I thought the wishbone was the trailing arm or upper control arm? Sounds to me like the wishbone maybe the one. Thanks for the help