Found the source of the front-end shake I was getting. Turned out one of the three small bolts that holds the steering knuckle onto the control arm was missing.

The bolts and nuts on there now are standard, not metric, and there are no lock washers on them. I suspect they were replaced improperly when the lower control arm bushings were changed.

that thing is commonly called the ball joint. i too have standard bolts on the right front of my silver car for the ball joint. when i took it apart, i lost the original bolts and OSH didn't have the metric versions so i drilled the holes out slightly to accomodate the standard bolts. I had plenty of steel control arms lying around, but that ball joint is riveted in originally.

"Ball Joint", d'uh.

I hope I'm at least correct in assuming that standard bolts mean that they have been replaced. I'm not sure if I should replace all 6, or just the missing one. I will at least get washers, lock washers, and loctite for all of them. Any particular material for bolts I should look for? I presume steel as opposed to aluminum. Sounds like hardware store quality is appropriate then. I was a bit surprised to see a location that I'd imagine sees a lot of force was attached by three fairly small bolts.

Salanis42 wrote:


Agreed, I've had the same thought, does look magical. From memory the factory does spec 10.9 hardware; but none of the kits I've ever purchased actually had that. The standard 8.8 seems to work. Well to remember, that joint carries no weight and the bolts are strictly in shear. If using SAE hardware do use Grade 8.

When I bought new control arms and ball joints I bought grade 8 bolts and nylock nuts for them. They cost just a few bucks and make me feel more secure, although one did come loose.

the thing i noticed with those bolts is that they fit very tight in the holes. There is much less slop than in a normal application. I suppose that's so the tightness of the nuts isn't really what stops it from moving around, but the bolt's tight fit in the holes.