Ducman82

interesting, the engine ground strap has a stud on the frame?

dr bob

Rob & William--

Looks like you [still] have aluminum lower balljoints on the car, judgement based solely on the thickness in the mounting plate area. True/false?

Jim Chambers' car is coming by here this week for some shift linkage work, and it still has the original aluminum balljoints on it at 135k. We will measure wear/play on the joints while it's here. He'll then decide a replacement strategy I guess.

Rob Edwards

True. Zero play in them, still nice and tight, boots are perfect. You can bet we'll keep an eye on them, but for now I think they're fine.

EDIT: I thought Jim had a '90GT. Does he have an early car as well?

The Deputy

Wow, Rob.

Thank you, very much!

Brian.

Mark Anderson

We discussed this at great length. I do feel a worn aluminum ball joint is dangerous but how is it that we are still taking apart 35 year old cars with original ball joints that appear to be in good shape? True that the design was improved with the steel joint but they were never recalled.
I would use them on my own car but I would keep an eye on them.

dr bob

His GT is gone. He picked up a very nice '78 in the last month or so. There's a list of things to check of course. He's identified the aluminum lower carriers already.

Rob Edwards

Got it- will be interested in the outcome RE: the turn signal issue, as Minerva's turn signals are acting strangely- William cleaned each contact in each housing and all the grounds, and the relay seems to be working but the click rate is very rapid. We also have issues with the passenger side driving and side marker lights. No voltage drop from the battery to the 14 pin, still need to test the busses at the CE panel. Then start tracing each circuit.

99% confident everything is connected correctly, but I will adivse that any time you disconnect an old connector, clean the connector and the wires, THEN take a picture that shows the wire colors and orientation. I have 4950 pics of Minerva now, and in some cases that wasn't enough for wiring orientation.

GregBBRD

Interesting.

I've found that finding aluminum ball joints without distortion of the aluminum around the actual ball and without play incredibly rare...as in I've yet to find one, in many years of looking.

The Germans are very, very reluctant to issue actual "recalls"....I can't think of a single one before the "rod bolt" fiasco, of late. I think one needs to read and think carefully about how techical bulletins are worded, to understand how critical they actually are.

Logic tells me that the forces on a ball joint go down, as shock absorbers wear. (The reduction of counter force on the ball joint reduces the actual load.) Installing new, perhaps more modern design, shocks will increase the load on what is already an obviously marginal part, from my point of view.

I understand that there is a fine line between "originality" and "updates" when doing "restoration" work. For me, an extremely important suspension piece, which if it were to fail endangers people, crosses over that line.

I would have "left" the dingy original coolant reservoir long before I would have left the original aluminum ball joints in this car....

William A

The specific issue of aluminum ball joints has rightly been discussed here. For me, one of the many great benefits of this thread has been educated and differing opinions.

My opinion is that ball joint decision making is first about safety and secondly about originality. We didn't go to all this effort just to throw it away bouncing between K-rails, so ball joint use has been and continues to be a weighed and considered.


The first order of business was to get the car restored as original as possible, leaving room for future updates/improvements as needed. In the end, I still may replace the aluminum ball joints for long term use. I am still trying to get a feel for the car now that it is so close to sorted completely. That goes for more cosmetic items like the reservoir tank as well.

I have tremendous respect for Greg Brown's comments, his and others caution regarding use of aluminum ball joints has been and continues to be heavily weighed, and is very much appreciated.

linderpat

Well, I am in the Greg camp on this. That said, I kept my original aluminum ones for whatever purposes. Just could not toss them. They'll go with the car someday (along with the air pump and related plumbing, the original blue coil and other assorted original goodies).

dr bob

We'll start a separate thread on Jim's car. It will be here later this week, and the ball-joint evaluation will happen then.

As far as determining wear, I plan to place a dial indicator to detect vertical wear. Then put a floor jack under the carrier and see how much play there is. Does any one here have an idea of a pass-fail number? I'm of the opinion that more than a few thousandths of an inch is cause for replacement. By the time it gets to ten thousandths one should be able to feel and hear the noises.

For those playing along at home, the actual wear in the joint happens where the steel ball meets the bottom of the aluminum housing. As there's more and more wear and vertical clearance, the top of the aluminum carrier, where it was 'rolled over' to capture the ball, starts getting "hammered" on hard extension, increasing the clearance there and making for larger and harder movement. A slippery slope. Horizontal impacts too, the result of normal driving, also serve to enlarge the space in the socket and allow more impact distortion to the socket.

Unfortunately there is no good way to add fresh lubrication to the friction area. Were it my own science experiment with minimum failure consequences, I'd be very tempted to flush and clean the original joints, drill a tiny hole from the bottom to the center of the socket, then carefully fill the joint with some EP grease via that hole. Then plug it. New boots too.

GregBBRD

Mark Anderson had an interesting idea, regarding this.

Since the steel ball in the aluminum housing seems to be the issue (not the actual aluminum surrounding the ball joint), he suggested that he might be able to have his rebuilder of his A-arms machine out the old ball joint and press in a new complete steel ball joint into the aluminum structure.

Sounded pretty clever, to me.

Mark Anderson

I will send a sample off to Europe with our next bath of arms and see what they think of the idea.

linderpat

Interesting. This could solve the problem for the purist crowd. I will hang onto mine, but not likely ever put them back in, rebuilt or not.

Rob Edwards

One more item checked off today, William took Minerva to get her smogged, and she passed, easily. 166,000 miles, original 39 year old cats.

The scary thing is that there was no record of her having been smogged since 1997. So she must have been registered in a no-smog county (likely, since her last registration sticker was 2013).

Numbers:



Last registration sticker: