Hi folks,

I'm very happy to be back in blissful Volvo-land again with my recent aquisition: a '92 940 GL sedan (silver with black leather), 84,000 original miles, great condition, which I picked up for $1,400. Needless to say, I'm pretty pumped up about the quality to price ratio with this one.

The car has the usual maintenance/tune up/brake issues which I'm going to take care of, however there is one problem which just presented itself that I could use some advice on. The car pulls heavily to the right when braking. On closer inspection, there seemed to be uneven contact on the right front rotor, so that and probably the caliper are going to get replaced. BUT in the process of removing the lugnuts to get the right front wheel off, the wheel itself also had tons of play forwards and backwards as I was unscrewing the nuts.

I'm not very familiar with suspension, so I'm trying to figure out what this might be before I get the car inspected. It doesn't seem tie rod related, because when I grasped the whole wheel and tried to move it to the right and left when off the ground, it's rock solid. There's just a lot of fore/aft movement, and the car only pulls when braking, otherwise it tracks great.

So I'm wondering if there's anyone out there who's had a similar experience and can help me identify the cause of this. Ball joint, maybe? And are there any suggestions as to how tough it might be to fix by myself?

Many thanks!