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Old 01-21-2002, 12:38 PM
r90skirk
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Question Front Suspension Questions on W123

Both of our 300's suffer from inner tire wear and too much toe-out on the front wheels. Although the "TD" is much more severe with more miles on her. I have gleaned thru all this great info on the forum and have been able to diagnose the majority of the problems to date. Many thanks to all of you for your previous efforts, you all are extremely helpful.

The lower ball joints have been done approx. 65k ago, along with idler arm bushing kit and steering damper. Upper ball joints seem to be tight, no play, with no externally visible problems w/ rubber. Upper control arm bushings are squirting out of end of control arm and lower control arm bushings are wore eccentrically with more of the rubber bushing showing on top than on the bottom.

So, I plan to replace both upper and lower control arm bushings this weekend, and thought I would order the bushings for guide rod where it attaches to lower control arm also. I'm sure the shocks are shot because there seems to be a lot of body roll during cornering, so I'll replace those also.

My question is this, I've read about guys replacing the mounts for the guide rods at the firewall at the same time. How do you check for wear or play in those? And it doesn't seem like a worn mount at that location could contribute to inner tire wear and front wheel toe-out? It also seems to me if there was play or excess wear in mounts that I would feel it in steering.

I've also read that the rear sub-frame mounts can contribute to this front end problem, and again visibly these seem fine, and I'm not sure about replacing those.

I'm not a collector, just like to do maintenance to keep up a couple of good safe daily drivers, have six kids, so money and time are a premium, but if I had to pick from the two, I can create more time to work on these MB's. I'm not into replacing every front end component if I don't need to, but at the same time I don't want to be pulling this front end apart every other weekend either.

I have read some very good info from "MarkM" and also from "tcane" in the past, thank-you all very much, I love, respect and appreciate this forum. Spend most of my lunchtimes reading on it! Thanks again.
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