The ball joint job scared me to death until I did a few of them. Not bad actually. Taking the steering knuckle off was the easiest. Now I just have spare steering knuckles with new ball joints pressed in and simply swap them when the car makes the familiar noise.

I would use anything like WD-40 or PB Blast cuz you're not trying to fix it, just locate the issue. In most of my cases, I could reproduce the noise by applying downward pressure on the front fender. Kind of a creaking noise.

In all three cases, the noise was remedied by the ball joint replacement.

Someone else may weigh in on this, but my local mechanic said that the ball joint (even when bad) was not as likely to break as say a tie rod end. I didn't trust that however and went ahead and did it.

Don

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DAILY DRIVERS:
'84 300DT 298k (Aubrey's)
'99.5 Jetta TDI IV 251k (Julie's)
'97 Jetta TDI 127k (Amber's)
'97 Jetta TDI 186k (Matt's)
'96 Passat TDI 237k (Don's
'84 300D 211k Mint (Arne- Undergoing Greasecar Conversion)

SOLD:
'82 240D 229k (Matt's - Converted-300DT w/ 4 speed