surfntomm

As the title suggests I am experiencing some mild vibrations that build with intensity as speed increases from about 55 mph upwards. at around 75 mph I begin to hear a metal on metal clanking noise and can only hear it when the radio is off and the steering wheel begins to shake back and forth some. At 85 mph the sound becomes much more obvious and the wheel shakes more violently. I did not attempt to go faster. The noise is coming from the driver's side front wheel/suspension area. A very peculiar aspect of this is that at ~70 mph the noise becomes much more noticeable while turning right but not while going straight or turning left (wheel vibration is hard to notice an increase since it is slight and my arms damp any increase in motion and the roads here are quite bumpy anyway). Braking has no effect on these symptoms and whether I am accelerating or in neutral has no effect either.

My car is a 2004 1.8T MT FWD @ 88k miles and has been on bilstein shocks/HR springs since ~40k miles and also has 19" wheels that DO get balanced on a Hunter road force balancer. I have had my bouts with wheel bends/alignment issues but these have largely been solved and this issue at hand has developed on its own without changing anything.

I did take raise the car at least twice on a jack and grab the wheel at 9 and 3 and try to observe any play in the control arms by wiggling the wheel sideways and front/bottom. I checked both front and left sides to make sure everything looked the same and I could not find anything to even slightly concern me. I will try to post a video later tonight if possible. I also checked for play in the axle by grasping the shaft near both boots to check for play. The only play observed was some slight play along the shafts axis (I believe this is normal).

I recently (~9 months ago) had a steering rack replaced but other than that no service has been needed.

Any help would be greatly appreciated and I have exhausted the search function but welcome any links to potentially helpful threads.

lyleswk

Unless you have recent done some alignment work and you now have something contacting, my vote is axle. I know you checked it already, but I had an axle on my old one that was bad, but not bad enough to be able to move by hand.