I was driving my car in the rain today and noticed that sometimes when I turned left, there was a thump sound kind of like a dent popping but a lower pitch. There are no differences in handling when it happens only the sound. The car tracks nice and straight. Any Ideas?

wheel bearing?

windshield wipers?

Rythmic? Relative to speed. Can it be done in a parking lot. Is it possible to make 3 rights to eliminate the problem?

must be all the smog out there on the left coast

The wheel bearings are new, wipers were off, and the tires and wheels aren't new.

Ball joint?

Sure-grip chatter?

It's an open rear a ball joint sounds possible, but wouldn't I feel it in the wheel?

First I would check my upper control arms, make sure nothing loose and take a look at control arm bushings.

Sounds like a dead critter to me !!!

New wheel bearings adjusted correctly? They will go up in smoke very quickly if not.

Wheel weights on the backside of the wheel hitting when the wheel is turned?

I had a similar noise in an 77 Dodge dually. It wound up being worn-out sway bar bushings.

Could be a bad tire. My car did that when a belt broke inside the tire. Could only hear it at low speeds turning one direction.

PM 71autoxr (Rick) -- he just had a similar problem with his Challenger -- he fixed it this past weekend, but I can't recall what he said it was.

I had a wheel weight barely scraping something only in turns.

This is going to sound weird but I had a similar
thing on my Dart only turning one way. It ended
up being the one muffler moving enough to hit
the square part of my driveshaft where it bolts
up to the U joints. Scratched my head over that
one for a long time.

I had a wheel weight do that. I had just got new tires and I thought they screwed something up everytime I took a hard left I'd hear thum thump thump... I got home jacked up the car and when I laid the wheel on the ground face down I could see where the wheel weight was hitting. I beat on it to flatten it and it was fine after that.