Robert, I still don't have a good picture of what you describe. The idler arm is not attached to the steering damper. The fixed end of the steering damper attaches to a point close to the pivoting end of the idler arm, but both are attached to the chassis, not each other. The idler arm has no ball joints per se. Attached to the idler arm at the free end are a ball joint from the right tie rod and the a ball joint from the drag link.

You talk about a busing so I don't think you mean the rubber covering a ball joint. The bushings I think of in that area are the idler arm bushings. They support the big bolt that goes through the idler arm and the cylinder below it. Those bushings can be worn enough to cause steering problems without being able to jiggle the idler arm by hand. Easy to replace on an SD, the exhaust has to come off a 300SE/L unless you do the unadviseable and install the bolt from below. I don't know what it takes on a V8.

But maybe the idler arm bushings are a tangent. Is there a picture you can attach for reference? If you have the CD manual, you can copy a picture by pressing Print Screen then pasting the result in MS Paint. I'm not a lawyer and I don't advocate copyright infringement, blah, blah, blah.

Sixto
91 300SE
81 300SD