Previously I had an incredible amount of clunking in my from end, well, my car's front end. So, first off I tried torquing up all the bolts surrounding the suspension, repacking and tightening up the wheel bearings. And then becuase I needed new struts and shocks I replaced them with some nice Bilstiens and the rear with Koni. (This is over the course of a year or so) When I had the alignment done the guys at the shop wanted to replace the left ball joint but I held off until a later date so I could do it myself.

In the last month, with less than 5k on all of those components, the front end started making really loud, scary clunking. So, with push come to shove, I finally got around to the last possible thing, those damn bushings.

This weekend I replaced all of the front bushings with the IPD Front End Poly Bushing Kit, and I also threw in some poly bushings on the sway bar and link and some new poly grommits on the sway bar end. The rear front A arm bushing were easy to get out, however the front let me know what would be the bane of my entire weekend. After workiing with my vice and some properly sized pipe sections I found that more drastic means were necessary. So then I drilled the rubber, sliced it with razor blades, cut it with my dremel, and tried torching in with a small butane torch. Finally the inner cylander came out in the vice.

But the I was left with a ton of crapped up rubber in the outer sleeve. So again I dremmeled, torched, and drilled. My low point was what I doused the whole A-arm with kerosine in my drive way and lit it on fire. Painfully, that didn't even have any effect.

In the end I cleared away all the rubber (I found that a dremmel fiber cutting wheel worked the best at removing the rubber) so that I could see and use a hack saw to cut through the outer sleeve. This worked quite well. And all of this *2.

Anyway, now here it is Sunday evening and my car is tight, responsive, and almost clunkless. I reiterate, almost clunkless. The front right has some small clunking that still happens when I go over speed bumps and pot holes. I have done the 6/12 o'clock and 3/9 o'clock rocking of the wheel to feel if it is the tie rod or the ball joint but I don't feel much play at all. I suspect that it is the ball joint becuase the right one has at least 100k on it while the left ball joint has around 5k on it. But I don't think the tie rods have ever been changed.

So, after all of this, my question is: After how many miles do tie rods usually go out? And can the tie rods and the ball joints still clunk even if I don't feel any play?

I figure I will change out the ball joint, since it is only $20 from FCP and it is an easy replacement, at least compared to the bushings. But should I be considering replacing the outer tie rod ends or even the inner as well even though everything feels tight?

Thanks-

Mike