What could bad strut mounts do? cause any damage or excessive wear on anything?

 

Can cause premature tread wear, cause unwanted front suspension geometry change resulting in poorer handling, and if severely broken could uotright be dangerous becuase it can cause a complete failure in front strut damper if the rubber in the strutmount breaks away entirely and bounce you off the road like a basketball. Also may dent the hood from underneath. I have personally never see one get so bad as to completely fail, but I have see many that are very close and scary.

 

as of right now all its doing is that it creaks when the wheel is at full lock, either way.

 

I recently rebuilt my front suspension and I replaced the strut mounts. When I took the old ones out I noticed that on both the rubber had split at least half way around the circumference! Glad I replaced them, coulda been ugly. I think this part gets overlooked too often on thirdgens. Although I haven't heard of failures yet either, as these cars get older it is bound to happen.