Well today was a weird day, let me elaborate.


I was on my way over to my friend Cirian's house to help him get his sr20 out of his 240. About a block away I take a right and I notcie that when I straighten the wheel out after the corner the honda symbol on my steering wheel is straigt up and down, its cocked to the right and so is my whole steering wheel, but the car is going straight. So I slow down and take a moment to figure out whats wrong and just then the wheel kind snaps and rights its self. So I keep on driving since his house is right up the road but im going very slow and everything is working fine. This is the kicker right here, As I take the final right hander onto his street I hit a small bump at about 5mph and go about ten more feet when..........WHAP......(grinding noise)..........the left side of my car drops down about 3 inches and I cant steer. So I stop in the middle of the road, two driveways from my friends driveway and get out. My left front tire has got about 4 inche of negative camber and looks like the lower control just gave way. I rush up the street to my friends door and get him outside..................we stand and look at it further but I cant see anything and neither can he, but I cant just leave this thing in the middle of the road........so I hop in and brave the 30 or so feet to his driveway. As im driving it its just ******* grinding and banging and hardly steering, but I make it to his driveway and park the thing. So we go get the jack and jack it up and take the wheel off. To my surprise the lower control arm is fine............but the lower ball joint is spining freely and ripped. There is no cotter pin and no castle nut at the bottom of the ball joint and the axle boot is torn to hell from rubbing up against the lower control arm........."expletive". So I take a walk down the street to smoke a ciggaret and get my head clear because I am piping pissed, as I walk I locate the castle nut, completely stripped of its inner threads and what is the remains of the cotter pin. "expletive"......so I walk back up to his house and begin to put the peices of this puzzle together. I am thinking that when I took that first right the left side hit a pretty good pot whole and with my stiff shocks and springs must have jolted that cotter pin and either bent it or broke a peice of it off and in turn the shock probably caused the ball joint to pull hard on that castle nut and probably got it off of most of the threads and that last right was probably it popping out and causing the recently stated events. Not a good day, I had it towed to a local shop to have it repaired.............needless to say I am not happy. I've been thinking about how it broke, thats my best Idea of how it happened, or I could have been the ball joint first and then the nut assmebly, but crap imagine if I was driving on the freeway and that happend . What pissed me off the most was that on Friday I had just nut and bolted the front suspension components because I know they take a beeting, I guess just an old car and old parts things are bound to break.
I'll take some pics of the carnage tomorrow for your enjoyment. I hope it doesnt cost an arm and a leg to get everything repaired...........im replacing the lower and upper ball joints on both the right and left, as well as the axles and seals. New castle nuts and cotter pins for both sides as well. Well thanks for reading, take care.

Ryan

 

i have a similar story and it happened to me on the freeway.

Steering locked up.. WHAM! The whole driver side hit the ground.....
needless to say i snapped 3 lugs, the hub dropped into the rim shooting sparks all over the I-15. I broke thorugh the cotter pin, shot the Castle nut(god only knows where) across the freeway. Broke an axle. It was bad. The scary thing is.....is i managed to make that car over to the edge of the freeway with no damage to the block/tranny/exterior of the car. And yes on the freeway it's FUCKEN scary.

The cause: A bad Cotter pin, the castle nut backed off, the arm popped up. The hub brough the whole suspension down and smashed the lugs off dropping the hub into the rim.

 

Holy crap man, thats scary.

 

indeed. What's even scarier was the towing bill

 

damm dude sound to me like you were OVERDUE on some front end work and not to scare you or anything but to my knowledge the upper ball joint comes with the hole upper control arm i had to replace mine at work and even though i work in a brake and front end shop the price for the part itself was like $120 dlls so i imagine that your bill will be pretty high but who know you might have a better shop that don't charge that much good luck and post some pics of the dammage

 

well, in 90-91, that upper balljoint is replacable. (or upper control arms off an older car, if that's what you have).

however, that upper balljoint alone is hard to find if you don't go through the dealer. moog used to sell it, but it's been recalled. fun.

good luck.

 

I just paid 95 dollars for 2 upper control arms with ball joints and 2 lower ball joints. These were on Ebay 2 weeks ago. If you buy the uppers for 75, the lowers are 20, shipping included.