[Shotimes] Bad Ball Joints or Wheel Bearings?

[George Fourchy]

On Thu, 03 Nov 2005 16:20:15 -0800, Alan Fanning wrote:

>To my disappointment, there is a tiny little bit of play on
>the passenger side when shaking the wheel about the horizontal plane (hands
>at 12:00 and 6:00).

That isn't that bad.  'Course you need to say how much a tiny bit of play is.  I had
1/4 of an inch of play on Lowrider in a brand new bearing when I was getting ready
to leave for the convention in Frederick in 2002.  That was immediately after I had
the bearing replaced when the old one had about an inch of play.  These were (still
are) Scott Chan's Wilwood knuckles that were new from TCE in about 1996 or so.  That
was the left side....the right side is still original, and at last check (2004) had
hardly any measurable play.

>So, how do I tell whether the play is the result of bad ball joints or bad
>wheel bearings? The car has 82k easy miles on it.

According to Helms, it takes two folks...one to wiggle the wheel, and one to observe
the lower ball joint.  If there is any discernable movement there at all, you need
to replace it or the LCA, whichever you want to do.  LCAs for SHOs are different
than SLOs, and are about $82 each (left and right are different) at NAPA.

I tried to find a spec for wheel bearing play in Helms, and couldn't.  Someone else
might know.

George