Richee3's Progress thread., Wilwood BBK installed. Options

[Box]

In my experience, they're still best. Their metals, rubber and the grease they use just seems to last longest. My links are also twice if not 3x as thick as OEM. However, they're not cheap.

Having ball joints blow out in a year with a minimal amount of driving is unacceptable though.

This. It's not a year; more like under 2 months of installation is when I started noticing problems. Not to mention, I paid over $60 for the pair from Advance. Could've got them cheaper from Rock Auto but I had to have them ASAP and didn't have time to wait for shipping. At an average of 30,000 miles in a year, it certainly wasn't "minimal" driving but none of it was rough driving. I don't baby the car but I don't drive it like it was meant to be driven either. Until I replace them, I don't have substantial proof that the ball joints are the cause of my issues, but if replacing them with OEM ball joints fixes my issues then I will be staying far away from MOOG products. My passenger side ball joint has a ripped boot for sure. Driver side still looks good.

Ahh ok, I figured the Celica was your weekend play thing by now. Still, even at 30,000 miles they should still be good.

[richee3]

It is now, but it wasn't until March when I dropped it off at the body shop. The days I don't go to work, it still serves DD status. I only take the SUV if I'm going to work or hauling the dogs. Nonetheless, even if the ball joints had lasted the full 30,000 miles, that's still unacceptably short life. I'm not positive that my ball joints are the issue. And neither are Dustin and Stef for that matter, since they were both able to drive the car last weekend. Still, it's either those are faulty or back to my initial theory of worn LSD and my symptoms don't match worn LSD.

The kindly folk at the Toyota service department unbolted my steering rack and fixed the steering wheel today for a sum small enough to make it worth it. I really didn't want to do that again. That fixed my turn signal issue as well. All four wheels are now aligned and OEM ball joints are ordered. Unless they get here by Friday, I won't be able to install them in time for the CSP meet. While at the CSP meet, I'll be picking up a set of Eibach Sportlines, so here's to having to get another alignment soon.

This post has been edited by richee3: Sep 9, 2013 - 11:33 PM

[Box]

At least the steering wheel is sorted out again.

[Batman722]

For your car to act like it did the ball joints need to be completely toast.
I've never been a fan of moog stuff.

There is major slop in the suspension somewhere.

[SwissFerdi]

Movement in the subframe or crossmember, perhaps?

[rave2n]

Movement in the subframe or crossmember, perhaps?

Sounds quite familiar to what I was facing.

Ending up being my subframe, I was chasing snaps and pops, but didn't realize the pulling issue I had until after I tightened up my subframe.

I did my ball joints not to long ago and didn't have a change in any results for steering/pulling, not saying that isn't your case. I always thought ball joints pop and snap when going? have any of that?

[richee3]

No pops, snaps, etc. of any sort. Subframe is completely tight as are the control arms. I thought maybe I had missed something when installing the control arm bushings but all related nuts and bolts are completely tight.

[richee3]

Small update, hardly worth posting. I got my pair of new OEM ball joints in, going to install them tomorrow. Also got my Vincent_Doggy radiator cooling panel in and painted, again going to be installed tomorrow.




And more importantly, I was able to yank this ugly, useless bit out of the dash...



So I could replace it with this.




Looks and sounds much better than the crappy single din unit. I was going to try to get the ball joints installed tonight but it turns out that I'll have some free time tomorrow. Here's to hoping they fix the weird steering issues.

[Batman722]

Good luck Daniel.
I hope this solves the issue.

[richee3]

Got the radiator cooling panel and new ball joints installed today.







To nobody's surprise, the new ball joints made no difference in the steering issues. So I'm back to thinking that it's an issue in the LSD. I don't know, I need to think on it for a while. In other news, CSP this weekend! I'll be putting over 3,200 miles on the car in three days.

[kurt95gt]

Maybe its not the car
Maybe its you just can't handle the power

[Box]

Well there's your problem, you've been taking illicit drugs.

[cheela]

maybe the car is just sick of you taking the beams in and out of it.

well, have a safe trip to CSP. I seriously want to be there.
Dustin and Stef are VERY VERY good at tempting me to come. maybe next year after my timing belt and other issues get sorted.

[richee3]

Just got home from the CSP meet. Gotta say that meet was a great meet and a lot of fun! Seriously great group of guys and girls. We're going to try to make it an annual thing if we can get the time off each year.

While we were at the meet, we decided to visit the local mechanics slash parts depot. Dustin and Steff really hooked us up as usual, and as usual found some crazy expensive parts for us to replace. I'll start with the simple stuff first. As soon as we got there, Dustin took me in the garage and gave me a little something he had kicking around- a set of JDM rain visors. One of them is broken and I don't have pictures, but it's nothing a little plastic epoxy won't fix. After I repair it, I'm probably going to paint them flat black to hide the damage. I'd prefer if they were factory clear, but for the price I'll gladly take them and be eternally in Dustin's debt! After that, they continued to hook me up with two OEM oil filters, a set of rear floor mats, a parcel tray in perfect condition since one of my tabs was broken, and a set of GT4 rear strut bar covers. Of course I have pictures of none of this.

The next morning, Dustin and Stef were bound and determined to figure out my steering issue so they pulled the car up in the garage, told me to shut up, and they got to work. Before they got started, I found a giant blister in the sidewall of my front right tire...



We couldn't avoid a huge bump in the road somewhere in New Jersey. I'm guessing that's what caused this, since it wasn't there when we left. I need new tires anyway, so we'll be picking some up soon.

Anyway, Dustin and Steff did manage to figure my steering issue. We all remember the hole I had to cut in the driver side of my subframe last summer while replacing the control arm bushings. A nut snapped off inside the subframe while removing the bolt that goes straight back so I had to cut the subframe open to remove the nut and replace the nut and bolt entirely. A picture, for reminder's sake.



Well, as luck would have it, the same nut on the passenger side of my subframe must have broken loose when I tightened the bolt up. I've checked my subframe bolts a couple of times and replaced everything steering-related. I completely ignored my A arms as an issue since I had to drive the car with the drive side nut and bolt loose and it drove nothing like this. I never even began to check those bolts. Needless to say, I'll be torching a hole in the other side of my subframe soon and replacing the subframe completely next time I pull the motor out. I'm not going to make a special job out of it but next time I need to pull the motor, I'll go ahead and replace the subframe. Dustin tightened up the bolt as much as he was comfortable with and the car drives much better now. Got a little work to do next weekend then the problem should be totally cured. Once again, a huge thank you go to Dustin and Steff for hooking me up with more parts than I know what to do with and finding my weirdest issues in minutes when I've been trying to figure it out for months.

[Box]

BOOOO POTHOLES! YAY FINALLY FINDING THE PROBLEM!

[richee3]

A couple of gratuitous CSP pics just because I can:

[richee3]

Had a little problem this weekend. First, a picture of the rain visors and what I'm working with.



I got ready to repair them this weekend and none of my adhesives even began to hold. Made a post on the Facebook page and my man KAOS came through for me, telling me he has a spare. Saves me a lot of work.

But here's the point behind this post. Brigette left for work Saturday morning and wasn't gone 30 seconds before I hear the Celica pull back in. She says it has no brakes so she's taking the 350Z to work. After a while I went outside to take a look at it and found all my brake fluid on the ground underneath the doors. Turns out that the steel brake line for the driver side brake finally rusted through. Normally wouldn't be a problem but since the forum was down, I actually had to use my phone to make phone calls and contact people and stuff. It was a real nightmare. But Batman722 and mkernz are the bomb and got me going in the right direction, so here are the pics of the temp fix.




For the record, in case anybody else runs into this, that line is 3/16th line. A few guys have replaced the leaking sections with stainless braided clutch line, I chose to keep it simple and use a replacement stick of brake line and some compression fittings. When I get a chance, I will be totally replacing the line from front to back.

[kurt95gt]

At least she didn't go real far
An it didn't happen coming home from CSP!

[cheela]

^ that.

[Box]

What the others said. Going is nice, but stopping is even better.