found the knock.........

[Nomad9]

Hi There,
I've had a very slight knock from the front of the Disco for a while, previous owner told me they had had the control arms replaced, saw the invoices, all good, no excessive tyre wear or feathering so I have just been carrying on............

Yesterday bought myself a set of 18 inch RRS alloys, time to take the 20's off, I removed the front near side wheel, fitted the new rim and tightened the wheel nuts, just gave the rim a spin and the wheel moved side to side about 10 mm :o, checking things I found the inner ball joint on the tie rod to be quite badly worn, thought it was the tie rod end at first until further inspected.

The control arms according to the invoice had been done by a LR agent about 5000 klms ago, surely an inner ball joint can't wear out that quickly. The wheel alignment had to have been done as part of the control arm replacement.......... The rubber boot was all intact, no holes and the inside of the boot was greasy, no evidence of grit.

Finding the ball joint that badly worn I would have expected more symptoms.

Anyway ordered parts, now awaiting delivery

[RichardK]

That's disapointing Marty, if the assembly was changed over then as you said the ball joint is part of that, is there any come back from the people who installed it? 5000 k's should be warranty job, particurlarly from an LR agent.

[LeighW]

^^^^^^ What he said...

[Redback]

Funny you should mention this, I've been chasing a rattle/knock in the front of our Disco 4 since getting the control arms done, I kept taking the car back to the mechanic, but he could not find it, so yesterday I put the car on ramps and starting taking things off from under the car, I grabbed the swaybar arm to move myself along the car and guess what, it moved, then grabbed it again and I could move it side to side, my mechanic didn't tighten it up when he reassembled it:mad:

Anyway it's all good now, might check some other stuff this arvo too, ya never know and besides we are doing the Darling river run, with some extra stuff this Friday, about 3000ks or so, so need to know all is good.

Baz.

[Nomad9]

Hi Richard,
Just for clarity it was the ball joint at the end of the tie rod, behind the rubber boot on the end of the rack. The control arm is all good, all new, I thought that they might of picked this up when doing the alignment at the end of the job. Whilst warranty would be nice I fear this part is a bit to far away from the bit replaced to get any traction with a claim.

This was the Perth one not the Southern one. I had a Deefer with a full service history from them and I found a couple of broken exhaust studs and a couple of other not so good things. The Southern ones reputation is still intact for me. The Perth one isn't looking that flash............

[Epic pooh]

Common problem as the ball foot wears with age and use. and not the sort of thing that wheel aligners notice. I theorise that doing the lower control arms puts additional stress on them hence failure shortly after they're done - certainly was my experience when I did my second set of lca the rack ends were done a few months later as they became noisy. Shortly thereafter I did the lower steering column as the bottom uni joint had become stiff ... And then I did ... Haha I'll shut up now :)

[RichardK]

Hi Marty,
I got the wrong one, however I would think that any "mechanic" worth his salt would have had a wriggle of the ball joints while he was under there

[SimmAus]

Hi Marty, I got the wrong one, however I would think that any "mechanic" worth his salt would have had a wriggle of the ball joints while he was under there
Sounds like his mechanic was wriggling something else under there, and left the " joint" bit out ;-)