What's the scoop on chassis lube? I drove my '89 626 over 170k miles, and never lubed the ball joints, tie rod ends, etc., and it was always fine. I'm sure there weren't any grease fittings on those parts anyway.



Now I'm hearing that some new cars (2004 Chevy Malibu) have plugs located where lube fittings should be, and that its a good idea to replace the plugs with grease fittings and lube it every so often.



I thought this procedure died out in the 80's with sealed bearings on front-end parts. Are some manufacturers still using non-sealed bearings?



Thanks!

 

Some cars come with sealed joints that have wear indicators on them to tell you when to replace them. Some cars and trucks still come with zerk fittings, at least my 2000 wrangler does. A good way to test out if the ball joints are still good is to pull up and down on them; if there's movement, they need to be replaced.

 

Wait a tic, I can move (wiggle) the front wheels on my 4x4 bravada up and down by hand with brand new ball joints.

 

your car's slammed right?



how new are these brand new ball joints?



slamming it speeds up the wear exponentially, ask my dodge dealer, i'd slam the durango 3-4" (after setting it was about 4" drop) then when the balljoints went bad i'd unlower it bring it to them and they'd be in shock that i needed new ones again. muahah. go warranties!



kevin.

 

it's dropped, not slammed.. not like i'm laying frame or anything! I've got a 4/3 drop. New joints = 2 months old.

 

well bravada's aren't reknown for ground clearance so a 4/3 drop is probably pretty low for that car, throwing off the suspension geometry.



i've gone through ball joints in about a 3 month time span, that's driving about 2.5-3k miles a month tho.



i thin a little wiggle is normal though.



kevin.