[Sapientoni]

The original aluminum ball joints usually wear a hole down thru the aluminum, much like it has just been spinning and drilling straight down. It will only show a little bit of wheel slop when you jack it up to check wheel bearings. The early design had the spring pushing down on the joint. My sudden failure happened as I backed the car out of the garage and turned the wheel. Luckily not at the d.e. event a month earlier where I failed tech with everyone thinking the wheel bearings were too loose. I got steel replacements from a box store that arrived with factory p/n's cast into them, made in France and extremely reasonably priced at that time.