Other than creaking, what are the symptoms of bad ball joints?
 

I know the tell-tale creaking is a sign of bad ball joints. What else?

when you cant perform alignment on the car. Also real bad ones will make a knocking noises over bumps

The spindle falls off the car.

And then there are the really bad ones. They break when you hit a pothole on the freeway. What happens after that can be bad, real bad or really bad.

vibrations at random.....vibration when braking.....a loose feeling on the road

Happiness is a rebuilt, in spec, freshly aligned front end.

I've just had three cars done in the last six months and they've almost already paid for themselves in saved tires.

you can visually tell the ball joints are wearing out, by the amount of space between the control arm and the knuckle. also, torn boots are a sign of imminent failure...

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-1.../P70253200.jpg

It's no fun when it happens. http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/tech-help/303574-borrowing-300e-2-8-week.html

-J

They are very simple to check. Safely raise the car on jack stands then apply the 4 P's; Push, Pull, Pry & Prod. You will learn if they are tight or not. If they are loose replace them.

The one on that W124 had no play. It did have a torn boot though, and rusted in place. It twisted in half as I was pulling into the parking space.

-J

No wonder. It appears you were parking at a Toyota dealer.

I think under the circumstances the w124 was justified in lodging the protest :D

Seriously, if you're going to have a ball joint failure, that is about best case.

in my humble opinion, the MB had absolutely ZERO right to fail in that dealership... the Japanese are all laughing at Germany right now...

This is EXACTLY what happened to me, except I was in a Food Lion parking lot & it was the driver side that went. All the tow people out here have rollbacks & it took some creativeness to get the car on the back of the wrecker (used a floor jack to jack up the damaged wheel & pull it on the rollback).

Hope to get it back from my indie today....

I wasn't going to the Toyota dealer across the street, I was going to the Goodwill store behind me to kill 20 min on my way to a client's. :)

That WAS the best possible case... not when I was going 70 on the beltway weaving between the ever changing jersey barriers :eek:

Whew! Doesn't seem to have damaged any of the sheet metal. And yeah, didn't happen on the high way.:eek: