kweevuss

I went to get an alignment today on my 05 gxp and the guy said that the ball joints and tie rod ends are starting to have some play in them and should be replaced. Are these easy to replace?

TheBlizzard

The ball joints are kind of the pain in the butt to do as it is hard to seperate everything at first, but you basically just have to take everything apart and put it back together, not super difficult, just time consuming.

The tie rod ends are not hard at all depending if its your inner or outer ones, or both. The inners are kind of a pain in the butt to get off because of the one large nut that you have to have a special tool for. Other than that it is the same thing, just take off the defective parts and put the new ones back on.

If you are fairly mechanically inclined and have a lot of tools I would not hesitate to do this yourself, if not I would just bring it in somewhere and have them do it. I did all mine myself in about 4 hours, minus the ball joints, those haven't went bad yet. Good luck.

kweevuss

Thanks for the reply. What is the special tool that is required? And also on these cars are there upper and lower ball joints? I saw on autozones website there was only lower. I am going to take the wheel off today and look at it better since I haven't paid too much attention to it before

3800gtx

Lower ball joint only. Upper uses a a bearing plate in the strut mount

kweevuss

Is this what I am looking at that I should get for the front?

http://www.autozone.com/autozone/par...78_46024_1749_

neilownz

Eeek autozone parts...

kweevuss

Is there a better brand? I didn't know where else to look for parts for suspension wise

99slpws6

Moog is some great parts a lot better than dura crap stuff auto zone sells.

The_Madcat

The duralast stuff leaves much to be desired but AutoZone does have quite a few really good brands, just stay away from Duralast.