Thread: ball joint maybe?

hello. about a month or so ago i took my car to the dealership to diagnose and replace a control arm bushing. it cured the major squeaking problem i was having, however it didnt take care of the little "clunk" i heard from time to time. i took it back shortly after to have them look for that, but they couldnt find anything. its about a month later and its doing it worse, and i cant afford to take it anywhere.

when driving straight, everything is perfect. bumps, dips, you name it, as long as the cars not turning, its perfect. once i go to make a right hand turn, right at the beginning when i start to turn the wheel, you hear a little clunk. if i make another right hand turn after that nothing happens. it "resets" itself when i go to make a left hand turn. it cant be a slow light-footed granny style left hand turn either. when i make the left hand turn, i dont always hear the clunk, but i often hear it making the right hand turns.
when im turning and going up or a down a small hill at the same time, like pulling into or backing out of my apartment parking stall, it does it almost everytime, when i do that it kidna sounds like the clunky/grindy noise bad cv shafts make, but both of mine are new

does that sound like a ball joint? or what else could it sound like?

ball joint or cv halfshaft

From your description I was thinking of what moves when you turn. Strut bearings, the springs get pressures on them, ball joint, strut tower bar has pressure, endlinks flex, sway bars flex and cv's turn

At first I was thinking spring movement and strut bearings. But....this is a W body and therefore the sway bar coudl be breaking/broken as nearly all of them seem to do.

jack the front wheels off the ground

grab wheel at 12'oclock and 6 o'clock position

try and tilt the tire toward and away .. if there is play.. replace ball joints and go from there.

thanks for the info guys. is there a way to see if the sway bar could be breaking? something i should look for?
the front struts have recently been replaced with Monroe quick struts

you should be able to tell on the swaybar by looking it over closely....cracks, splits, or if it is being shredded or already broke.

alright guys. i lifted the front end. test both wheels by grabbing at 12 and 6, also tried 3 and 9, and both wheels are solid as hell. with that in mind, could a ball joint still be bad? and still feel solid with that test? if not, then what else could it be?? also, the sway bar and sway bar bushings look good

I have the clunk as well in mine. I had a trusted shop look it over and they could find nothing wrong with it either. I know a fellow member on here who has it as well and it started the clunk with 30k on the odometer. The GM dealership told the owner that is was normal and he has now put on 30k additonal miles with nothing further developing. I would like to figure mine out, ball joints test OK, so I am personally leaning towards the CV axles, but I dont know.

can you feel the clunk in your foot at times? it hasnt always done this, it just started a couple months ago.

how did you test the ball joints? did you do the test where you grab the wheel?? i bought a new ball joint, im gonna start on the drivers side and see how tight that one is compared to my new one. if its fairly tight im gonna move on to the passenger side the replace whichever one is more loose (since i have the part now anyways) if they're both tight, i dont know what im gonna do yet...

Yes, I manually tested the ball joints the same way as mentioned above. Both feel OK( I am not sure how the mechanics tested them, but they say that they are OK too. I also had my tie rod ends replaced, and that did not do anything for them. I had one boot torn open on mine when I bought it on the passenger outer CV boot. I replaced boot, inspected joint, and re greased. All seems well with it. I can feel the clunk through the floorboard on mine as well...I notice it more if I am parked and back out of a spot, or if I backed in and then I drive forward out. That to me seems more like CV's but I dont know.

Most of the time you need a pry bar under the tire. Thats how we check them at the shop. It could be a strut plate.

as mentioned before, both front struts were replaced with quick struts, so everything strut related is new

The strut plate is what the strut bolts to. Also new can be broke.

oh, i did not know that. i will inspect today.....

A lot of people have this issue and I've had it as well. One area a lot of people overlook is the subframe bushings. More specifically is the subframe rubber/metal insulators (located between the cradle and the chassis). When ever I backed out of my driveway with the wheel turned you'd feel a clunk.

This was fixed by replacing the rubber/metal insulators. The old insulator rubber delaminated from the metal part and allowed slop which caused the popping/clunking sound.

thank you for that input. that leads me to another question, how hard is it to lower the cradle enough to change these rubber/metal insulators? after searching for a brief minute, im not finding these parts

Originally Posted by Jakegday

thank you for that input. that leads me to another question, how hard is it to lower the cradle enough to change these rubber/metal insulators? after searching for a brief minute, im not finding these parts

Well theirs only 4 bolts that hold the whole cradle up. You can loosen / remove one bolt at a time, but care needs to be taken when doing this.

The entire front suspension needs to be lifted off the ground. Take a jack and support the corner of the one your taking the bolt out of. Then slowly lower the jack on the corner that your removed the bolt from and pull out the top insulator.



You can see them in the 1st pic and see where all 4 bolts hold the cradle up.



These insulators are only available via GM and are around $20 each so not exactly cheap. Best bet is to buy them from paceperformance.com or gmpartsdirect.com if you plan on it.

I know the front insulator part number is 10249634
Rear insulator part number is 10249631

well doesnt that just look like a ton of fun! would i be able to get away with removing just those 4 bolts for this repair, or will i have to disconnect all of the other things attatched to it too??

hopefully the weather is nice enough today (sunday) for me to go out and compare the tightness of the ball joints to the new one