I was getting a fairly pronounced and regular clunking sound whenever I came to a stop with the brakes. I could recreate the sound when braking forward or reverse at very low speeds. The sound would also occur when releasing the brakes and moving forward or backward. I checked all the brake components carefully for loose slider bolts, bracket bolts, pad shims/clips, etc. I greased everything up and made sure all was in good working order. After all this, the sound persisted so I bought lower ball joints and one driver side upper control arm. The passenger upper arm was changed a couple of years back. When I removed the lower ball joint it still looked in very good condition with basically no play. It has about 80K miles on it. It is Toyota original. I used the part number for a 2004 GS (my car is 1998). I believe the newer ball joints are better than the ones for 1998-2001 cars.

The upper control arm was a different story. The upper ball joint was well worn and could move almost a mm or so inside the socket. Needless to say I was lucky it didn't fail. I believe this was the source of my clunking because upon replacement the clunking sound is gone.

BTW I did start to replace the lower ball joint even to it still seemed good with a Moog unit but then I ran into a problem. When I went to torque the joint down to factory spec the bolt and spindle threading stripped. I was shocked that the threads would not hold torque. I removed the ball joint and sure enough the threads were stripped on both the spindle and the nut. They were not cross threaded because the stripping occurred at the point were the nut is tight down on the spindle. The starting threads on the ball joint spindle were still perfect. I know I did not over torque the nut because I put back my old ball joint and it torqued down just fine at the same torque setting on my wrench.

I lost my confidence on the MOOG units and returned them to my supplier. I will be purchasing factory originals again.