Quote:
Originally Posted by Henn28
Wheel speed sensor was waiting for me when I got home from my most recent trip. Sure enough the top tabs on the female (chassis end) shattered when I tried to unplug it, but fortunately I was able to work it out without further damage. I have a new plug, but really didn’t want to do that fiddly work. I started the car and voila, trifecta solved.
Now for the bad….ive been trying to troubleshoot a front wheel that refuses to get into ballance so I decided to swap the rear I had off, with a front wheel. After doing so, and dropping the car back down I noticed an unmistakable bushing squeak, mostly on acceleration from zero to maybe 10mph. Presumably, this is as the cars weight shifts after? Anyway, super frustrating, especially since the CSR has new upper and lower control arm bushings, amd a new way bar link. It also happens a bit when the wheel is aggressively turned left and right when stopped.
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Took the morning yesterday and swapped in the left eBay bearing carrier/knuckle. No small job, having done both sides now, but I couldn’t get the tension strut ball joints out of my knuckles due to stripped torx screws. Interestingly the eBay knuckles both had old ball joints in them that were held in with torx bolts and came right out. The heads of the screws in my old ball joints stripped out of mine when I put even moderate force on them. I replaced these fasteners with 10.9 grade corrosion resistant bolts when building up the new knuckles.
The left side took about 3.5 to 4 hours to get the job done. My squeaking/groaning noise has only gotten worse in the past week, so while I was in there I checked the torque on everything, and all suspension seemed torqued properly. However, I did find a mangled left lower control arm boot, at the knuckle. That ball joint looked and felt nasty. This sucks because I replaced these only a few months ago, so either I screwed it up on the install, or it simply tore on its own. The car is up on jacks or the lift often and I do see the that specific joint is very compressed and at an extreme angle when the suspension is fully extended. Maybe the boot got squashed and cut.
At any rate, I put a ton of grease in that ball joint just to troubleshoot the noise I’m hearing. I’ll need to get new arms in obviously. I also had to pull the tension strut so I could knock it off the old ball joint with an big hammer so I pulled the metal center piece out of the poly bushing and put a ton of grease on it. Recall I replaced my Turner monoballs with poly recently and I’ve since read polyurethane bushings can squeak. I ran out of time to do the same to the right side, but somewhere between all these variables, the noise I’m hearing was much, much better on the drive home from the garage. I’m still getting it a bit from (I think) the front right, which makes me think the poly bushings are the problem. I used the grease that came with the bushes when I installed them, so who knows. No way though do I want to be pulling my tension strut ends at the subframe every few months to grease them.
On the plus side, the car needs a front end alignment, but it’s pretty close somehow after doing all the work, so I’ll ignore that for a bit. I’m happy that I’ve got new tension strut ball joints and new wheel bearings on both sides now. I obviously need new lower arms, and would go with poly because I like the ride with poly tension strut bushings, but more squeaking worries me, if that is what is causing it.
Finally, by swapping front wheels to rear (same side) in two stages, I tracked my 60 mph wobble to the wheel that was on the front right. Seems that either Goodyear screwed up my recent balance job on this wheel, or somehow it can’t be brought into balance due to damage or tire issues. I’ll take my spare off and get it balanced to swap with the offending wheel and see how that goes.