Not trying to scare anyone, but I wanted to let you know of a potentialy dangerious situation. If you already know about this please ignore.


I was driving home from work this morning when I noticed the car was unstable in one of the high speed turns. I thought it was wind blowing the car side to side. The motion seemed too uniform (back and forth) and got so bad that the car took up 1 1/2 lanes of the road in the turn. Needless to say I thought I had broken something in the suspension.
I put the car on the lift and pushed and pulled on the wheels to check for loose components. Guess what. The PS rear ball joint (replaced 20,000 miles ago) had come loose AT THE BOLTS. My wheel was moving nearly 1/2" at the tire tread. I remeber paying special attention to the torque when I installed them and was concerned because the originals had expanding rivets.

So the WARNING is this:

If you have this type of rear ball joint, check the bolts. Jacking the rear wheels off the ground and tring to move them inboard and outboard fromt the car center is a good way to check. It may be a good idea to use anti-vibration nuts or double nut it. If you remove the nuts, verify the alignment.

(in my best radio voice).... This has been a public service anouncement.

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Paul

Pontiac prestiege.... Pontiac performance...... Pontiac POWER!
For a full history of the Fiero SS: http://www.cardomain.com/ride/789315

Thanks for the heads up!

Something like that could mess up your whole afternoon.

It's a good idea to use thread lock compound on just about all of your suspension bolts. Lug nuts are about the only exception I can think of to that rule.

It's also a good idea to give all those nuts and bolts a once over at least once a year. I usually make a point of checking mine when doing brakes or if I have the wheels off for other maintenance. Only takes a few minutes extra.

My freinds 4speed 3800 swap car had the actual ball joint "stud" fall right out of the knuckle on him a few days ago.

Really a scary experience, the wheel instantly flip 90 degrees, pulled the axle out, and then he jumped lanes about 4 times back and forth from each sholder, lucky there were no cars in either direction.

I never found out what caused it, I helped him slide it back in on the side of the road, then slowly drove it back to his house. We re-seated it and tightend the crap out of the pinch bolt, I really didnt find anything out of the ordinary there, but I wasnt the one that put that part together (during the swap I let my friend do some of the work, he has worked on fieros more than me too....).

This was on a factory ball joint though, nothing to do with this thread

Just in case anyone misses this in the General Chat section. Good information, I think.

quote Originally posted by blackie2m6: https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum1/HTML/063229.html This picture shows the cause of your balljoint comming loose. It is installed incorrectly. All the strain and forces are being transmitted through the 3 bolts, instead of from the balljoint directly to the control arm. The rear balljoint is installed from the bottom of the control arm, and the support plate is installed on the top. You will have to remove the balljoint and reinstall it the proper way, better check the other side too. Once that is done you shouldn't have any problems with it comming loose because the forces will be transmitted through the 2 parts properly.

[This message has been edited by fierofool (edited 12-28-2006).]

Thank you.

Not sure how this happened. I'm correcting the problem now.

I might be mis-reading this post, but shouldn't all of those bolts have a hole in them for a castellated nut? There should be a cotter pin on them to prevent them from backing out.

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Todd,
2006 Pontiac Solstice
2004 Volkswagen Beetle Convertible (Wife's Car)
2002 Ford Crown Victoria LX
1987 Pontiac Fiero SE / V6 (3.2) 5-Speed
1984 Porsche 944 5-Speed
1981 Pontiac TransAm (Olds 455BB)
1973 Volkswagen Type-2 Transporter

On the rear there is a pinch bolt that goes through the spindle bracket and aligns up with a slot in the ball joint stud. Yes there is a slotted nut on top that you would put a key through. The issue here is ( i think) is the three bolts that go through the all joint flange and the lower control arm are comming loose. Also the ball joint was installed wrong. It should have been installed from the bottom.

quote Originally posted by 82-T/A [At Work]: I might be mis-reading this post, but shouldn't all of those bolts have a hole in them for a castellated nut? There should be a cotter pin on them to prevent them from backing out.

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" DRIVE IT LIKE YOU LOVE IT"

quote Originally posted by ohio86se: On the rear there is a pinch bolt that goes through the spindle bracket and aligns up with a slot in the ball joint stud. Yes there is a slotted nut on top that you would put a key through. The issue here is ( i think) is the three bolts that go through the all joint flange and the lower control arm are comming loose. Also the ball joint was installed wrong. It should have been installed from the bottom.

Ok, right... the ball joint on the rear control arm (lower) would be bolted in by first pulling it in through the bottom, and then attaching the two nuts.

Likewise with the front, the ball joint on the top control arm would be brought in through the top first, and the one on the bottom control arm would be brought in from the bottom. That way the ball joints would be holding the two control arms to the spindle.

Damn, so someone installed them the other way? That would mean that the only thing holding the ball joint on would have been those two tiny bolts???

Wow!!!

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Todd,
2006 Pontiac Solstice
2004 Volkswagen Beetle Convertible (Wife's Car)
2002 Ford Crown Victoria LX
1987 Pontiac Fiero SE / V6 (3.2) 5-Speed
1984 Porsche 944 5-Speed
1981 Pontiac TransAm (Olds 455BB)
1973 Volkswagen Type-2 Transporter