JP74

"But they don't make the parts exactly the same to the tolerances needed for alignment, and was the old alignment good anyhow?  Have a front alignment done asap otherwise you will start to eat your tyres. The alignment is cheaper than a new set of front tyres."        GOOOOD POINT!!!

 the outer tie rod end has play, so i have a new one on the way..    in the meantime, i had a chance to get under the car yesterday and check things out..  

and i think i have a bent radius arm on that side(passenger side)...    with both front wheels off the ground, the sway bar was sorta resting on the radius arm,  but not doing that on the drivers side...  driveway was at a slight angle, but since both wheels were off the ground i dont think that would matter..       took some pics of the arm, the car is not jacked up in the pics...

does it looks bent to anyone else?..        also, sway bar end links... should i have a spacer in there?  kit i got didnt have one and stock was to small, so i just did it that way...

You check by jacking that corner, and then grabbing the wheel either side and seeing how much movement there is. 

 

Cross check with grabbing the wheel top and bottom and checking for movement. 

 

If you have movement in the horizontal axis it's the tie rods

If you have movement in the vertical axis, it's the bottom pivot mount on the radius arm

 

If you have movement in bothaxes it's  wheel bearing, or the tie rod end and bottom pivot mount; or all three!

 

You can generally see movement in a poor tie rod or bottom pivot mount; and hear the wheel bearing.

Thanks for the how-to!!!   

i am most definitely getting some play in the horizontal axis...

did not notice any play in the vertical axis, but im going to recheck that again as soon as i can..

so since im getting side to side movement, i guess that means i need to address the tie rods...

now, should i just replace the outer tie rod ends, and mark the threads where the old ends were,   install new ends and adjust to where the old ones were set. to get it  close to where it should be?, then get an alignment when i can..

or is it best to just replace the whole tie rod, inner/outer?   

thanks for all the help and info!

EDIT:   should have asked before, but,  when checking for movement in tie rods,ball joints etc, should the steering wheel be locked?  or free to move

put the old mounts back in last night, one of them looked to be a little off from the other, slight angle/cocked near the base, looks like a quality control defect issue...  note to self, dont buy cheap crap mounts (mevotech)..

drove on the highway today with the old strut mounts...   it is no longer pulling right real hard,   theres still a minor pull, but not nearly as bad..    a bit of steering wheel shake but not severe..         Like you guys have said,  sounds like i need to address the tie rods,   since they are so old, prob a good idea to just replace them with new ones, do a "redneck alignment"  to get by, till i can get a fancy alignment haha.

thanks for the input guys!

I thought the mounts were all the same also, same part # for left and right, no direction marks or etc.. i think what i was told applies to other cars, but not these..

i went ahead and put the old mounts back in, just to see if theres any change(maybe one was defective, at an angle or etc?). i'll see tomorrow if there is a change at all..

 as for an alignment...  i'm sure i could definitely use one, i'm the 2nd owner of the car and theres a good chance it hasnt been aligned.    

Struts don't mess with alignment much unless your strut mounts are very worn out. The mounts are the same either way around. I would say possibly your control arm bushings are worn out, or your tie rods need to be adjusted.

I'll have to look into the control arm bushings and the tie rods. i've never messed with all that, but i have the FSM ...  now that i think about it, it seems one wheel is a bit off of center compared to the other, with the steering wheel centered..   

the old struts i removed were the stock originals, and they were completely shot.... i probably didnt notice other issues like tie rods out of adjustment, bad bushings, alignment out of spec etc because i wrote it off as being the bad struts..

Awesome!.   Great to hear,   thanks for the input!