The way I know to test ball joints is to jack the car up and use a big bar and pry up on the bottom if the wheel. The video i linked explains it perfectly also these cars only have lower ball joints.

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^this

Also, if your lower control arms were replaced I'm hoping they also replaced the ball joints too, or did they just replace the bushings? If so that would likely rule out a low control arm component.

 

Strut or strut mount or mount bearing.

 

Could also be your tie rods (inner and/or outer) on the right side - could even be the wheel bearing. Mine is doing that on the driver's side front wheel. But for me it looks like it's the bearing having a tiny tiny bit of play which is causing the clunk.

No matter what it is, if you want to figure it out yourself you'll need to jack up the car and pull the wheel off to visually inspect everything, in addition to what was posted above.

Good luck, and keep us updated!

 

Get some jack stands and a floor jack. Doing even this kind of inspection, you need to put safety first. Your scissor jack is for emergency tire changes only.

 

The caution you sounded about using the scissor jack for this sort of diagnosis was on point @eagleb. I was nervous about that and your note helped reinforce my doubts enough that I didn't attempt to jack up the car.

Instead, with wheels on the ground and parking brake set, I crawled under to inspect the ball joint visually. I didn't see any signs of failure at the ball joint so I started shaking all the other suspension components by hand listening for noise and feeling for play in the connections. Tie rods and their joints seemed skookum but I did notice a little click when I pulled-and-pushed the stabilizer bar near the right-side end link. After some wriggling around under the car I found a position where I was able to consistently reproduce a clunk noise by gripping the end of the stabilizer bar and rocking the car backward and forward. Once I started reproducing the clunk I also noticed a tiny bit of lateral movement where the stabilizer end link is bolted to the control arm.

That right-side end link was replaced recently so the nut was probably not quite tight enough initially and then worked itself loose over time. I grabbed a ratchet with 17mm socket and managed to tighten the bolt a half turn. Then used a breaker bar with socket to tighten another 1/4 turn. Without a torque wrench and more hands on experience I don't know how close I am to the 45 newton metres that are recommended on this nut. I suppose time will tell.

With the bolt tightened I could no longer reproduce the clunk noise by hand from under the car. Bounce test also suggested it was fixed and a short test drive confirmed it. 🐳

 

Outstanding! Nice work. Hopefully that's all it was.