That Clunk Over Hebron Road Bumps Is Probably Your Volvo’s Sway Bar Links

It starts around 25 mph. You roll over a patched seam on Hebron Road and the front end answers with a hollow knock, one per bump, always the same corner. The steering feels fine. The car tracks dead straight, which is exactly why Heath drivers put up with the noise for months.

That knock is usually a sway bar end link — the smallest part in your Volvo’s front suspension, doing some of the hardest work. October is when people finally call about it, because cold rubber and stiff grease stop hiding the play they hid all summer.

The end link is a short rod with a ball socket at each end

Picture a steel rod about the length of your hand, with a small ball-and-socket joint at either end — one bolted to the sway bar, one to the strut housing. When the left wheel drops into a dip, the bar twists and pulls the right side with it, which keeps the body flatter through a turn than either wheel could manage alone.

Those sockets are the weak point. Each one holds a few grams of grease inside a thin rubber boot, sits low enough to catch every bit of road salt and standing water thrown up by the front tire, and runs dry within a season once that boot splits. Then it rattles.

On the S60, V60, XC60 and XC90 we see most around Licking County, the front links are usually the first suspension part to make noise — well before the struts. It is not a failure yet. It is a warning.

One knock per bump, and the steering wheel tells you nothing

The signature symptom is a single hollow clunk each time one front wheel hits a bump at low speed, with no vibration through the wheel and no pull. End links do not steer the car, so a worn one makes noise long before it changes how the Volvo drives.

Listen for where it happens: parking-lot speed bumps, the lip at the end of a driveway, the seams on OH-79 toward Newark. Anything that moves one wheel and not the other. Smooth pavement stays silent, which is why the noise seems to come and go.

Two more clues. A worn link knocks harder when you swing the wheel back and forth at walking pace, and it sounds sharper on a cold morning than it does after ten minutes of driving.

Licking County pavement is what wears them out this fast

Freeze-thaw is the reason central Ohio eats suspension parts. Water works into a crack, freezes overnight, lifts the slab, then thaws — and by late October that cycle runs two or three times a week on the older stretches of Hebron Road and US-40.

The scale is not imaginary. ASCE’s 2025 Infrastructure Report Card lists 31% of Ohio’s roads as being in poor or fair condition, and that is the surface your Volvo absorbs on every trip to Granville or New Albany.

Then the salt trucks start. Boots go brittle, hardware seizes, and a car that lives outside fails sooner than a garaged one on the same mileage.

Ignore the knock and the sway bar bushings go next

The slop spreads. First to the rubber bushings clamping the bar to the subframe, then to the brackets themselves, and by that point you are buying bushings, brackets and links together instead of a pair of links.

There is a running cost too. Driving on deteriorated roads added $725 per motorist in extra vehicle operating costs in 2023, according to ASCE’s national roads report, and a loose front end absorbs that punishment worse than a tight one.

One thing to rule out: if the noise becomes a grind or a shudder under braking rather than a knock over bumps, that is a different part and it needs looking at sooner.

How we pin the noise down before selling you parts

Fifteen minutes on a lift settles it. No guessing. With the suspension unloaded, a technician works each link by hand — a good joint has no play, a bad one moves with a click you feel through your palm — and a pry bar catches the marginal ones.

We check what sits around it, because strut mounts, control arm bushings and a loose bar bracket all knock over bumps, and new links on a car with a dead strut mount just relocate the noise. Our techs carry over 30 years of combined experience across the 16 makes we service.

New links go in as a pair, torqued at ride height rather than hanging, and then we road-test on the same stretch of pavement where you first heard it. Quiet, or it is not finished.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What does a bad sway bar link sound like?

A: A hollow metallic clunk, once per bump, from one front corner. It is a knock rather than a squeak or a grind, and it usually shows up under 30 mph on rough pavement. Swinging the wheel side to side while parked often reproduces it.

Q: Can you drive with a broken sway bar end link?

A: Short trips at low speed, yes. Do not make a habit of it. With a link disconnected the sway bar cannot do its job, so the body rolls more in a corner and an emergency lane change feels sloppier than it should.

Q: Do sway bar links have to be replaced in pairs?

A: Not technically, but we recommend it. Both links share the same age, mileage and exposure to salt, so when one boot splits the other is close behind. Doing both at once saves a second round of labor a few months later.

Get the clunk checked before the first hard freeze

A knocking end link in October is a quick fix. The same knock in February, after the salt trucks have been out, becomes a seized-bolt job with sway bar bushings on the invoice. Tell us which corner talks and over what kind of bump.