[MikeMcMo]

Update for anybody subscribed or still following:

After the holidays, and driving the car around with the front end clunk noise, I had an idea. In the last few years I had made contact on Facebook with a family friend I hadn't seen in a long time. He has had his own shop for a long time, and I took the car up there as an excuse to catch up and see if he could sniff the problem out. He had always impressed me as a smart guy.

He put the car on the lift and with literally 10 seconds of observation he figured it out. My brakes are painted red. He noticed a fine red dust around the area. The brakes were loose. Took the wheels off, tightened the brakes on the spindle, and I took it for a test drive- problem solved.

He looked at the suspension control arm and front suspension stabilizer bar links that my first mechanic replaced. Said that stabilizer bar links are generally going out all the time and *maybe* they ought to have been replaced anyway, but that the mechanic "might have been a bit overzealous" in replacing the control arm. He didn't run down the previous mechanic, saying mistakes can happen. But I was impressed that he figured it out immediately with simple but close observation and intuition. It was never a suspension problem at all. All it cost me was a 6 pack of decent beer, and it was great to see an old family friend. I'll be going back, and hope to be paying full price.