Ford Forum - Enthusiast Forums for Ford Owners - Grinding noise left front end with traction control OFF

Hi everyone. New to the Crown Vic family but have owned only various Fords my whole life. I have a problem that i can find no mention of anywhere, hopefully someone out there can enlighten me. I have a 98 CV police interceptor 4.6 with the traction control button in the glove box. Car runs great, except for the minor noise from the rear end ( but i know what that is and how to fix not the issue here...I dont think) anyway, raining the other night, first real of the year so i hit the button to turn on traction control. No problems with it at all. Later on with hit a hidden pothole with driver front tire and heard a noise..like something fell off or broke, but car ran fine the rest of the way home..no problems. Next morning, no rain left for work andfelt like left front tire was flat or broken ball joint.. got out no issues kept going and had to pull off freeway, felt like the front end was gonna crumble into pieces. Grinding clunking. BAD. After work got under it, nothing visually wrong. my mechanic friend told me it was most likely the rear end, so i put it on jack stands so i could see what was happening with the wheels spinning. When i shifted to low and gently pressed the gas, the most horrific grinding and clunking noise came from the left front, and the traction control light on the dash, started flashing...?? I thought somehow it was on so i hit the button to turn it off, but I turned it ON as it was already off. When i did that, the grinding and clunking stopped instantly!!. I turned it OFF , gas, grinding clunking...turned it ON no noise. So it drives great as long as the traction control is ON if I turn it off, it feels like front end is gonna fall apart. So i drove it to work with it ON no problems. Put the ABS scanner on it,,no codes or issues.
Can anyone tell me what the heck is wrong and why these issues would occur with the traction OFF but not ON?
Thanks in advance..