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View Full Version : Good times with a 100k+ NE car



filter27e
10-06-2008, 05:53 PM
Yeah so my front end has been making a metal binding sound for a while now when turning in both directions, but lately seemed to get worse. So I figured I'd slide under there and take a look, to find one of my axles had spewed it's grease all over everything, so I figured with 125k on the car it'd be a good idea to replace both sides. Get the new axles, bust out my haynes manual and all was going good until I get to the part where the book tells you to seperate the control arm and the steering knuckle at the lower ball joint. Yeah, the bolt that goes through the knuckle to hold the ball joint in was rusted to hell, and even though I sprayed it down with pb blaster, hit it with a hammer a couple of times, and let it sit overnight, BOTH sides broke the bolt off in the knuckle. So now with the ball joints (mind you I'm assuming they also are original, so I'm not going to cry about it) stuck in the knuckles, I now have to get two new knuckles from the junkyard, two new ball joints, then I noticed that one of my outer tie-rods are toast. So now my original plan of spending like $130 on a couple of new axles has suddenly turned into $300+... weeeee.... Of course when I go to my subie dealership to get the tierod I see a mechanic there changing an axle out on a BE, and he just disconnnected the control arms on the other end... oh well I figure of all of the things that could be making the noise, they're now ALL getting changed all at once.

d1giPhux
10-07-2008, 07:39 AM
Oh.. the joys! I feel you there man.. whenever you seem to wanna get something done for cheap.. you ender up spending 5x as much! haha!

Grafton
10-07-2008, 07:52 AM
if you "work" on your car to fix something simple

its a law of nature that the number of extra things to break/ need work is directly related to the difficulty of the original problem

filter27e
10-08-2008, 05:12 PM
Ahhh the $$ piles up. So I got a pair of knuckles from a local junk yard, and they charged me $35 a piece. Pick up an inner bearing seal (the store only had one) but I noticed the junkyard left the lower ball joint in one of the knuckles, even though it was broken in half. Nice of them I must say. So, not having much to leverage against I was having a hard time getting the bolt out, so I take out an impact gun and have at it for about 20 seconds before the gun rounded off the bolt. Well, I wonder how the junkyards return policy is? So I took my old knuckle to the machine shop and dropped it off a little bit ago, and he said he'd take care of it for $40-50 bucks. Cheaper than hunting down a new/low mileage knuckle... but not sure that it's better since mine has 125k on it. *shrug*

filter27e
10-15-2008, 06:22 PM
Oh more good times today. Car's not back together yet just because between work and school I had 1 day this week to work on it (today). And I forgot that I beat the crap out of the lower strut to knuckle bolt on both sides because they were completely stuck, and had to order new ones. Figured while it was in there and I was waiting for parts I might install those urethane steering rack bushings I've been hanging onto for like 2 years.... yeah first bolt I touched snapped in half, and that's after soaking it in PB blaster for a few hours. Those suckers are grade 8 too... I determined that my engine crade/crossmember is doomed, since I broke both swaybar bolts off in it when I did my sway bar as well as one of the bolts that holds the jack plate on.