My front end is getting worse, to the point where I am afraid to drive the car. It started out having a shaking vibration around 70 mph but only while accelerating, turning right or left doesn't make any difference. Now it begins around 30 mph and the front end shakes right to left noticibly. I think I have narrowed it down to either the passenger side CV joint, or the drivers side inner tie rod. I noticed I can move the axle rod on the passergers side up and down about 1/4 inch, don't know if this is normal but I couldn't get the drivers side to move at all. On the drivers side, I can hold onto the wheel at the 9 and 3 o'clock position and move it back and forth slightly. Also there seems to be some fluid back where the inner tie rod is, but this may be an engine oil leak. Also, when I bought the car the power steering resevoir was very low, so I don't know if there is a possibilty that a steering component is leaking. Any ideas on what my problem is??

 

There are some possible causes to this problem; Tech could give you the best T/S, so as a temporary...

- Outer tie-rods. Visually inspect the boots to see if they're torn.
- Worn out suspension components.
- Tyres extremely out of balance/extremely uneven tyre pressure.
- Wheels out of round.
- Wheel alignment hideously going out of spec.
- Wheel bearing, though this should have been noticed by low-pitch noise.
- Axle drive shaft splines wearing out (not very common but listen to Tech first).

A faulty CV-joint is usually noticed either by clicking at turns or torn boots. If you did not notice any changes at turns, they are probably ok.

Keep an eye on the PWS reservoir, as well as the rack & pinion assy to see if there's a leak. 850s take ATF for the PWS fluid (Dexron-III/Mercon).

This is the best I can do with my morning, slow head, so I may be missing simpler/more obvious items[8D].


JPN

 

Well, the outer tie rod boots look ok, and they don't seem to have any play, the struts seem tight, I replaced the bad spring seat, rotated tires but didn't make a huge difference (new tires up front), and there is no low pitched noise. Two of the wheels are not the greatest, they have some dents, but I would think the fact that the problem is only noticible when accelerating would rule the wheels out as a problem. The alignment may be off, but again wouldn't that cause the problem to be evident when coasting? The cv boots are not torn, but there is a pile of old looking grease on the frame below the boots, so I don't know if maybe they were replaced with crappy rebuilts. There isn't any real clicking while turning either, so maybe they are ok.

 

I crawled under the car today and realized that the drivers side ball joint is going out, so hopefully this will cure my problem this time. I think that my wheels and or tires are not completely round and was probably making the ball joint problem even more noticible. I'll let you know if this is the fix.

 

I hope it cures the problem.

I remember the very first question I posted here was how to remove the clamp bolt for ball joint. I had to resort to propane torch + chisel + hammer violence, garnished with some cussing words. After I replaced the ball joints, sway bar links, struts & shocks and had 4-wheel alignment, the car handled like new.


JPN

 

Yeah, I'd hope it would handle like new after all that work and expense! I don't necessarily need mine to be like new (after all it has 230,000 miles!), but I would definitely settle for not having the feeling like the front end of my car is going to shake itself off the frame

 

I would change all the ball joints, and also consider the sway bar end links as well.