[Vwdiesel] Help ! Do I need upper strut bearings ?? a bit long ..

[Nate Wall]

This is how I discovered I had a bad ball joint. At
about 140,000 miles I all of a sudden noticed the
steering wheel was off center a little when going
straight. Upon returning home I jacked up the front
and I noticed alot of in/out play in the LF wheel when
grabbing it at 12 and 6 O'Clock and push/pulling on
it. Obviously a bad ball joint. Tell-tale sign. The
ball joint failed very suddenly, I think (Which I
thought was rather odd, since its rubber boot was
undamaged. Removal of the joint revealed it was in
fact worn out. The other side got replaced at the same
time.

Strut bearings that have play in them tend to "Knock"
when going over slight irregularities in the road at
slow speeds. The sound will drive you nuts trying top
figure out the cause, unless you know what it is!! I
even replaced control arm bushings once, being unable
to locate the source, to NO AVAIL!, when in fact it
weas strut brearing play. Notice I did not say strut
bearing failure. Many times new bearings are installed
and their spacer is too wide and they knock. (Not
enough pre-load). Roger Brown has an excellent write
up on the cause and solution on his web site. You can
drive A LONG time on noisy strut bearings.

Another thing I have trouble with is telling if its a
CV joint or wheel bearing going. Last time, I replaced
all of these at the same time due to my inability to
tell which was witch after two weekends of messing w/
it! A wheel bearing failing tends to groan a little
when turning at speed ane way, and not the other, like
when changing lanes, or exiting the highway on an exit
ramp.

How do you tell if its the inner ot outter CV joint
that is noisy? That stumps me. And not differential
bearings going bad.

--Nate
--- weasel <weasel1 at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> Is there a simple way to check and see if it is in
> fact the ball joints ??  I posted this on the
> TDIClub and one guy responded that he thought it was
> the CV joints.  It almost makes sense, but it
> doesn't explain the recent alignment changes.  Its
> definately one of three things; upper bearings, ball
> joints or CV joints.
>
>
> >
> > From: Sandy Cameron <scameron at compmore.net>
> > Date: 2003/09/20 Sat PM 07:31:11 EST
> > To: "Derek" <weasel1 at sympatico.ca>
> > Subject: Re: [Vwdiesel] Help !  Do I need upper
> strut bearings ?? a bit
> >   long ..
> >
> > At 05:49 PM 9/20/03 -0400, you wrote:
> > >This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
> >  The only other thing that I can think that it
> might be would be the ball
> > joints,
> >
> > That's it, unless you have a loose wheel!
> >
> > Sandy
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> vwdiesel mailing list
> vwdiesel at vwfans.com
> http://www.audifans.com/mailman/listinfo/vwdiesel


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