My R52S had 83k miles on it. Just installed new poly LCA bushings and a couple of new ball joints. Tie rod ends look fine, remaining ball joints seem fine.

I have some play in the steering. On the throttle the car pulls a little right, off throttle it pulls a little left. It feels like the alignment settings change. Found globs of silver grease inside the front passenger wheel, but the CV boots are all in good shape. I think I'm hearing a slight clicking, faster with speed but not RPMs, and seems to get louder when I hit the brakes.

Is it the wheel bearing? Good way to make sure?

 

Above question still applies, but I decided to check out the driver side as well. Lots of play when I grip the wheel at 9 and 3, enough so that I can hear knocking in the axle. All the bolts are tight, so I'm assuming outer ball joint (inner is brand new)? It doesn't look like it's moving, but when I unbolted it it does move in all directions very easily. The play is at the front of the wheel, tie rods still feel solid. It's possible the clicking noise was coming from this side, I could only hear it when it was bouncing off of my neighbors' block walls on my right.

I ordered one since they're cheap and it's probably a good idea anyway, but if there's something I'm missing please let me know.

 

Sure about those axels? Gobs of grease and clicking are synonymous with bad axel joint ( usually). And when you have play does the susp arms move or just the wheel

Sent from my iPad using NAMotoring

 

The Bearings in the Axle Joint are needle bearings and caps (like a rear wheel drive U-Joint) sometimes they fail and can provide a nice clicking sound... also indicative of finding lots of grease.

Yea, I have replaced a few axles because of this (Up in the 85K to 120K mile range).

But I would also check the Wheel Bearings, if you are getting play when you rock the wheel back and forth in the 9/3 position. And to check them you are going to have to pull the axle anyway... so a quick inspection of both.

Axle Joint, remove the boot clamp pull the boot down (watch out for gobs of grease) inspect the bearing caps for signs of wear and the evidence of missing or broken bearings.

Pull and look at the wheel bearings, normally if they are shot you will see lots of play in the roller/race area. (Sometimes it is easy, you remove the axle and the bearing falls out in pieces... when this happens you are required to make the Homer Simpson "Doh!" noise and thank the gods of bearings that you didn't have a catastrophic failure while transporting a carload of children holding baskets of kittens and puppies).

Motor on!

 

When everything is together, only the wheel moves, on the front edge. There's no visible grease on that side, and the CV boots all look perfect. If I unbolt the lower ball joint from the wheel hub, there is some play on the axle where it will move in and out a little bit. I thought that was normal with the hub assembly unattached from the LCA like that, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

On the side with grease in the wheel, there is no play when I try and move the wheel around. The grease was in globs, not spun around like a bad CV boot would do. The amount of grease wasn't consistent with a CV either - like 6 or 7 penny-sized globs. There was a tear in the outer ball joint so my first thought was that all of the grease had been squeezed out.

Thanks for the feedback. I may just take it apart and check the bearings. Hopefully the new ball joint will solve it.