Well, it's been a while since I've posted, but thought I'd let you all know the results of rebuilding the suspension on my 95.

I purchased all but the crank seal on fleabay. I bought new control arms, tie rods, complete strut/spring assemblies, rotors and pads. I know the parts are likely cheapo Chinese, but they looked pretty good.

I had intended to install all of it myself, but with all the other projects I had going on I finally just paid a local mechanic that I trust to do it. The parts had been sitting around for more than a month and I just couldn't get to it. He only charges $35 an hour and it took him a total of 8 hours. Total labor cost was $280, not too bad.
The only problems he had were getting the bushing off the control arm and removing the crank pulley bolt.

After he replaced the parts I took it to a local alignment shop, another $68 bucks, then had tires rotated/balanced at Discount Tire, free.

So, it now drives like new at 235k miles on the clock. Now all I need to do is clean up the emissions parts (MAF, TB, IAC, EGR) to stop the high idle. It still does have a minor "clunk" when going over rr tracks so at some point I'll go ahead and replace the steering gear mounts.

Replacing all these parts has also reduced the "torque steer" that was so prevalent. I'm not sure which component contributed the most to the torque steer issue, but it's resolved now. The rattles in the front end are gone now.

One thing to note, it has always vibrated at highway speeds. I had previously (in '02) replaced struts, axles, wheel bearings, had it aligned, tried different wheel/tire combinations but no matter what I did, the front end would shimmy at 60+mph. When I started this project I thought the last thing that could cause the shimmy would be rotors. That's the only other rotating member in the suspension I hadn't replaced. So now, no more vibration at high speeds. It's really smooth. I'm happy.

So, I bought the car in 2002 with 119kmi on it for 6700. I have put about $1500 in repairs on the car and driven it for 116k mi. so that's just over 68/month for the last 10 years to own the car, not bad. That doesn't count for gas, tires, oil changes, insurance or taxes, just the cost of the car itself.

Maybe it'll last another 5 years now.

 

Glad everything worked out for you.