Junkman, I'm at 262k right now and I've had it for 20k. No suspension parts replaced during my ownership.

When I had the wheels off, I did look at the upper and lower ball joints, and those at either end of the tie rods. All of them had flat, but not torn, boots. None of them wiggled by hand, though, nor did they respond to my very scientific analysis of tapping them with a rubber mallet while listening for metal-metal contact.

HOWEVER. The car absolutely does follow the road crown. Badly. On the interstate, I've usually got 10-15 degrees of steering dialed in just to continue straight.

I never looked into it because I thought this was just how recirculating ball steering behaved, having only owned R&P cars previously.

So what're my most likely culprits, and how do I tell that they're bad enough to cause the racket? I have seen a lot of posts about the idler arm bushings and drag link causing slop, but none of them described a noise like I'm hearing.

Another noise that I wasn't sure was related (but now I wonder if it might be) is a barely-audible clunk when slowing to a stop. It happens below 5mph, around the time (but not at the same time) the trans does its last downshift.