New ball joints & tie rods- thought it was just preventative but is noticeable!

gsxrken · gsxrken's Garage

At just over 97k miles, I decided to R&R my ball joints and tie rod kit as preventative maintenance ahead of a track day coming up. From what I could tell, wiggling at 6-12:00 and 3-9:00 didn't indicate anything was amiss. But the steering wheel is now 100% still at up to 75MPH, whereas I was getting some movement that I didn't really label as a "problem" but just chalked up to a 26 year old car. Rather than a vibration, which is different and would prompt one into getting to the cause, this was just a little play, like the first 1/4" or whatever of steering wheel rotation was taking up slack somewhere. Now its solid... that play must have been in either the joints or tie rods, or both.

Based on this, I'd agree with Grady's advice to swap em out at around 100k just-because. With a gradual wear across the boards, "Feel" is evidently something that can be improved even if nothing is clanking around in the front end.

WIL84911 · WIL84911's Garage

Cool... can't wait to do mines... Thanks for sharing your results..

JMP · JMP's Garage

Good luck with your track day! Just upgraded mine to turbo version, 3 hours but installation went mostly smooth. I had words with the boots lol. alignment and tires next.
I'm now waiting for axil/CV units to arrive.

dshepp806 · dshepp806's Garage

Just recently did mine (well the P-wrench did!). We loaded new sneakers all around,..checked wheel bearings,..loaded new Turbo Tie rods corner balance then alignment,..things are good now...I need to get this damned coating off of the new wheels to better gauge response but I can tell a difference with these TT rods as opposed to factory originals.....

BEST!

Doyle

gsxrken · gsxrken's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by JMP

Good luck with your track day! Just upgraded mine to turbo version, 3 hours but installation went mostly smooth. I had words with the boots lol.

Yep, the boots are a bit of a hassle. After a few minutes of cussing, I used a hair dryer to get them nice and pliable, and some silicone spray to good effect. Magic after that.

My turbo's LH side rod at the rack was a beyotch. I ended up using a torch to warm up the rack and break the loctite bond. Very little room up in that area to get a good bite on the weird nut they used. Why isn't it just a giant hex nut, instead of the thin flats?