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Replaced upper/lower ball joints, deep creaking from under front

jogirob

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I replaced the ball joints on my 74 Charger about 3 weeks back. I had the car on jack stands for about a week waiting on new brake calipers and hoses. After I buttoned everything down and torqued everything to spec I took it on a ride and heard some deep creaking coming from under the front of the car when going over road undulations. I don't get the creaking when braking, or going over speed bumps or going up and down my drive way. I was hoping it was just the car suspension components settling back in.

Good to knows:
-The driver side lower control arm had a thread on type of ball joint, I didn't find this out until I pressed it off. It was slightly more difficult to press off than your standard press fit ball joint, I guess I'm just that strong. I replaced it with the correct press on type ball joint. The control arm didn't look to be damaged from this.
-I received the calipers to a 72 Charger. It has a different hose connection type (direct screw on rather than a banjo bolted line) fortunately I also had the 72 brake hose so everything paired up just fine.
-I completely disassembled the steering knuckle since I was having problems installing my ball joint tool with all that hardware in the way. Properly torqued it all down.
 
I'm not an suspension expert by any stretch, but my first thought when hearing squeaking is either (a) metal on metal from worn out suspension - this shouldn't be the case for you, (b) inadequately greased polyurethane; it squeaks like crazy, or (c) new joints that weren't greased enough.
 
did ya change out the lower control arm pivot bushings?
or did you just roll with the worn out ones...
 
-The driver side lower control arm had a thread on type of ball joint, I didn't find this out until I pressed it off. It was slightly more difficult to press off than your standard press fit ball joint, I guess I'm just that strong. I replaced it with the correct press on type ball joint.
I'm not familiar with the 74 but this part of your post confused me....are you saying you pressed out a threaded ball joint, and then pressed a new one in the previously threaded control arm? (On the earlier stuff they were supposed to be threaded). Just spitballing here but you may have fooked up the control arm just enough to where the ball joint moves just a bit under the heavy loads?
 
I'm not familiar with the 74 but this part of your post confused me....are you saying you pressed out a threaded ball joint, and then pressed a new one in the previously threaded control arm? (On the earlier stuff they were supposed to be threaded). Just spitballing here but you may have fooked up the control arm just enough to where the ball joint moves just a bit under the heavy loads?

I was confused by this too, but took a look at a micro phish for parts and found a listing for a thread in lower ball joint. However the most common is a press in lower ball joint.
Your point of - if some actually threaded in a ball joint where they shouldn’t have and then the OP pressed it out and then pressed in a new one may have foobar’d the control arm is a good one. I can see that.

The other thing I can think of is that maybe his control arm actually required a thread in ball joint and he has now foobar’d the control arm from pressing out the old and one pressing In a new one when it actually required a thread in one.

I am not sure what the differentiating factor is between the two control arms, maybe someone can enlighten us.
 
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Did you grease the new ball joints throughly? They arrive with just enough grease to keep them from rusting... If you didn't you might get lucky but I've seen lots of joints damaged to the point that even after greasing they creak & groan till they get replaced...
 
So I'm confused ... did you replace the lower ball joint assembly with this
mancini-racing-lower-ball-joint-right-hand-19.gif
or did you replace just the ball joint in the one that you had?
 
The lower control arms are supposed to be strictly press in ball joints according the the FSM. I was surprised when I saw threads on the old ball joint. Threads on these balljoints are so coarse and sharp they can bite into non threaded control arms like nothing. You do have to put something like 200ft-lb's of torque when tightening these so I could see why one wouldn't be the wiser when having to strain to get it to screw on, or maybe the PO only had a thread type and tried to make it work? I think because the lower arms are non threaded, i was able to press it out without a problem. When I pressed in the replacement it took a normal amount of force, it wasn't too easy, it wasn't too hard. I had already done the other side so I had a feel for it. I did pre lube the ball joints. Prying on the control arms with a crowbar showed a good tight fit on the bushings.

Anywho, the creaking is gone. I only use this car on the weekends. Took a good 4-6 drives for the creaking to go away.
 
My 1973 Road Runner has threaded ball joints on the LCA. I think I read somewhere that 1973 was a transitional year for them (they could use either), but maybe I'm remembering wrong. That being said, I wonder if the LCA is different for threaded versus non-threaded? I know the ones that use the threaded design were shipped without any pre-cut threads because the threaded ball joint would cut its own threads into the control arm at installation time. Don't quote me on this. That being said, I'm not sure if I would necessarily trust a press-in ball-joint in a LCA that already has cut threads, but it looks like you're good?
 
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