I have a clunk coming from the front of my car. Its fairly consistently reproducible when changing from forward to reverse or reverse to forward. I just clunks once when I change direction. I haven't done any work on the suspension recently, and I've gone through it and checked all the bolts for tightness and pried on things as best as I can and not found anything loose or with extra play.

The koni FSD's are 5 years and 60,000 miles old
The outer ball joints and tie rods are slightly newer, but probably have 50,000 miles on them
The sway bar links are probably 40,000 - 50,000 miles old
the inner ball joints are 2 years and 20,000 miles old
the lower control arm bushings are 2 years and 20,000 miles old (powerflex)
The front sway bar bushings are 2 years and 20,000 miles old (powerflex)
The strut mounts (IE fixed camber plates) are 1 year and 10,000 miles old

I do like to do track days, and my most recent set of track tires was a set of hoosier R7's so I'm sure I'm putting more load through the suspension than was ever intended. I'm kind of thinking of replacing the sway bar links, and if that doesn't do it, the outer ball joints next, but I just find myself wondering what the life span of most KONI FSD shocks are. They ride fine, and no obvious bouncing, I don't notice any oil leaking that would indicate a bad seal, but maybe they're developing wear and that's what's clunking?

 

check your top passenger side engine mount. its probably bleeding black stuff everywhere.

 

definitely crossed my mind, and I probably should look at my engine mounts, but I did replace all of them 3 years and 30,000(ish) miles ago. My upper engine mount (the one that leaks oil in the facelift cars) is a solid polyurethane TSW mount from WMW.

 

Your parts list seems really thorough so it’s probably not the case, but are you running any type of lowering spring? These are supposed to lead to premature failure of FSD/Special Active Koni’s.

On the other hand, I had the same change of direction one-time clunk after I installed coilovers on my ‘05 around 37k Miles. Like you, I checked the torque values a couple of times with no improvement. Not sure how I came to the conclusion, but somehow I decided it was the stock front endlinks and started increasing the 45? ft pound spec on them, with the clunking finally disappearing around 70-75 ft pounds.

This is what solved my clunking problem, but proceed at your own risk as torquing beyond spec could cause damage to the fasteners or parts to fail. It probably would have been better to try new endlinks torqued to the correct spec.

 

Thanks for the idea, I'm on stock springs so I don't think that's worn the shocks out prematurely, but I wonder if 60,000 miles and 10-15 track days has worn them out. I did crank the sway bar links down a bit tighter, so we'll see how that goes. If that doesn't do it, I think I'll start throwing parts at it, or maybe see if the local alignment shop see's anything that looks worn.

 

I had a clunk on my MC40 that was driving me nuts and for the longest time I could not locate the source. It turned out to be the strut mount hitting the top of the spring perch when compressed. I swapped the entire assembly and that cured the problem.

 

To @cooper48 's point.
In my case: After having swapped out the lowering springs back to stock + Upgrading/reinforcing the strut towers w/ the "Slam Sandwich" (Carvenspeed under tower Indurators + M7 top strut mount plates), new top strut bearings/strut mounts; I started hearing a soft clunk every time I changed from forward to reverse = i.e: backing in to a parking spot. As mentioned; I rechecked for loose bolts & re-torqued. Ultimately, I changed my top bearing/strut mounts back to the original ones I had replaced - the clunk is no longer present.
As a last resort; I admit, It's a bit of a PIA, but it maybe something worth trying if everything else fails to solve the issue.