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Well... among the other things I've been doing to the car (installing a new gas tank, then removing and dealing a broken weld in the new gas tank), I keep coming back to my front end clunk and my concern about ball-joints.
I checked the ball joints again and could find no movement whatsoever. Well, there's a tiny bit in the passenger wheel, but that is hub-spindle movement and it's not much... I knew my tie rods were a little loose, but tonight I closely inspected the whole thing. The passenger side (where I hear the clunk) is a little loose, but not too bad. The driver's side, which I had not looked too closely at, was in bad shape. The rubber boot was split and there was almost no grease left.
I removed the whole connecting rod assembly and swapped it for my known-good spare saved from my 71 1800E. The tie tod adjustments differ a bit, but I figure with the slop in the old tie rod - I could not trust that it was really aligned anyway. I'll have to get it to a knowledgeable alignment fellow soon, or try George's masking tape/measuring tape approach.
Anyway, I was preparing to order my new ball joints, but I'm going to hold off a little longer and see if the tie-rod replacement solves the noise issue. I've had some very favorable contacts with Matthias from Skandix and I suspect that I'll order from them when I do put in the order.
After tonight, I know that my wheels are not suddenly going to break away and send me careering into a concrete barrier or worse... That takes a lot of stress and worry off my shoulders.
Thanks for the help and specific advice!
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