looked like they couldn't?
Well they probably won't look like they can anyways when they have the weight of the car on them lol! You need to jack it up and remove a wheel and actually torque it down.
99.999% of the time when there is loud popping/clunking sound on any corner of the car it's one of the endlinks.
In my experience(a lot of it):
If you can be driving on a perfectly smooth road and you can make the clunking noise by steering the wheel back and forth rapidly(to make the car body pitch left and right)... it is end links.
Struts, control arms, tie rod ends, etc won't ever do that unless they are just SO far gone that you are probably in serious danger driving the car.
End links are the single easiest thing to diagnose IMO because nothing else suspension wise almost never is as easily duplicated.
As for the OP's noise... if it goes away when hitting the brakes then I'd look at the brakes. Look at the brake caliper bracket mounting bolts in particular and make sure they're torqued to spec. Make sure the pads are sitting correctly and that you didn't forget or lose the caliper spring. Without that in place the calipers will make all kinds of racket. Of course check the caliper bolts as well.
edit: Nuse is right on the money... bolts don't care about how tight they
look... they'll fall out or fatigue and snap if you don't have them torqued to the right spec.
