P5 clunk/pop noise from suspension

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'02 Mazda Protege5
I can feel it in the steering wheel, a distinct clunk/pop noise and coming from the suspension when I'm either moving the steering wheel side to side in park, turning while driving and going over small bumps like cracks in the road or those spaces like over bridges. I assume it happens with larger potholes but the bump itself would mask it.

I tried to shimmy the wheels with the car off the ground to see if there's any play and there is very little if any play in the wheels. but i can feel the pop most when I put my hand on the inner tie rod. more on the driver side than pass. side. It seems worse after its warmed up, weirdly enough.

I'm thinking it's the inner or outer tie rod going bad. what do you think? I don't think its the steering rack bushings because wouldn't that cause the whole rack to move and I would definitely notice the steering would be weird.
 
Had a very similar problem with mine. It turned out to be the swaybar endlinks were shot. When the car was in the air you couldn't tell
 
Mine did that when it had bad strut mounts. The rubber piece between the spring itself and the mount was done and the spring would move when I turned the steering wheel. I would check that.
 
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