Let me just preface this by saying I'm a complete n00b on the forum and if this thread belongs elsewhere, please don't hesitate to move it. I'm also completely new to cars, although a bit of research has at least let me kind of figure out what a control arm bushing is.

My husband and I took a 2002 Civic LX sedan (automatic) we were thinking of buying to a mechanic after we noticed a clicking noise coming from the driver's front side during hard turns/cornering. The mechanic said the front control arm bushings "have movement in them", and said it wasn't an issue -- yet. They said we could still drive it just fine ("we only put it on the inspection because we have to cover our butts") and we wouldn't have to worry about replacing them until this winter. They quoted me Cdn$350 labour plus parts (around another $100) to fix the problem. Although the noise was only coming from the front driver's side, the garage said we'd have to replace both sides on the front.

Is what they told me true? How do I know when it's stopped being an irritating clicking sound and has become a serious issue? Is it at all possible to do this yourself if you know what you're doing (which we don't) and have the proper equipment (which we definitely don't)?

 

It can be your cv joints are going bad.

 

A phone call to my mother-in-law's regular mechanic revealed the same opinion.

One thing I'll note is that the car only has 47,000 km (about 30,000 mi) on it. MIL's mechanic thought that was too early for either of those problems, but felt that CV joints were more likely. Lemon-aid notes that owners of that model of car have complained of suspension knocking as well. I'm still lost as to when it becomes a "real" safety issue, but the noise is pretty damn annoying so I'll fix it sooner rather than later.

The car's perfectly fine on normal turns, right now it's just the hard/fast ones that make it click.

 

When I first bought my 90 accord brand new, the CV joints on the driver side started making noise around 10,000 milles.

 

they could go a 1000 miles or they could go 150,000 miles without going out, its usuly a rarity for them to go out that fast

 

Well, the story has a bit of a twist for an ending:

We took it in to the mother-in-law's mechanic. Within three seconds of it being on a lift they found out it had been in a front-end collision of some kind -- the frame was still bent and the entire front cradle had been replaced. The poor baby was probably a write-off. The mechanics figured the knock was coming from somewhere in the body of the car, and wasn't really fixable without replacing pretty much everything one at a time to see if it worked.

We decided not to buy the car. A shame, as it was fully loaded.

 

a bittersweet ending