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Front End Grinding Thunk
Posted by Mark Mueller (more from Mark Mueller) on Tue, 17 Jul 2001 23:58:12
In Reply to: , Kok Chen, Sat, 17 Dec 1988 12:00:00 

I posted a while back on my 1988 9000S with a problem of noise and some
'two stage' steering feel rounding corners.  I couldn't seem to find the
problem when I looked through motor mounts, A-arm thrust bushings, and
all the front end fasteners I could see.

The problem turned out to be hard to find because several things I
checked were in less than great shape.  New motor mounts helped.  New
thrust bearings were in order, but neither of these solved the problem.
I tried to move the wheels with the vehicle on jack stands (and safety
blocks in case jack stands failed) -- none the less, ball joints were
the major problem, and struts and strut bearings were contributing.  The
left ball joint was really bad, and the right was no longer smooth in
movement.  These were units I installed about 100,000 miles ago, and
they lasted about 2/3 as long as the originals.

The struts were original, at 255,000 miles.  The left front was weak in
nitrogen pressure, though still responding.  More significantly, the
mounting flange of doubled up sheet steel was rusted internally and off
the car was visibly bulged from the rust.   The good news is that all is
back together, and I have a relatively tight and safe car again.   The
strut mount bearings were sloppy, but not terrible.  I replaced them as
well.  Now I need to do the rears -- all original BOGE parts.

A TIP on the strut replacement:  Loosen the retaining nut on the strut
about a half turn before removing the struts from the car -- I could not
loosen the nuts at the bench using just the 7mm hex key and a 22mm deep
socket (onto which I ground flats for a large crescent wrench).   I
applied almost 60 degrees of flex to the hex key, but it didn't budge.
Back in the car I applied this kind of force and added 'lean' against
the crescent wrench in the proper direction and both nuts came loose
rather easily.   Probably an impact wrench would solve this.   The
replacement bearings are Korean (ScanTech).   They hopefully are of good
quality, I'll report if the car lives long enough to tell anything about
their longevity.

Thanks for those who responded to my posts.   If you have front end
noise on your 9000, take heart and check ball joints that don't 'rock'
by hand.   At least they are pretty easy to change.

Regards,

Mark Mueller
1988 9000S,  255,000 mi
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