Fellas, this will sound funny, but a couple months ago, I was making a left turn out of a lot, and caught sight of a female. I became distracted and ran into the island which serves as a lane divider. My front left tire struck the high curb, puncturing the tire. I limped into another lot, and put my clown tire on.

Took it into the dealership, and switched my rears to the front, so the tranny wouldn't be spinning two tires of different sizes. Stock Potenzas are 50-series, my HTR+'s are 45 series. Anyway, they said all I needed was an alignment.

I've been putting it (alignment) off, but I have still had this knock in front right (weird, why wouldn't noise be in front left suspension) everytime I go over a bump, or make a turn. When I back into my garage, and have to maneuver in our tight Chicago alleys to back her in, I hear this knocking sound several times.

Anyway, I had lunch with a girl from work who used to work as an appraiser, and she told me my balljoint is shot, and needs to be replaced yesterday. She says I run the risk of snapping my tire off because of stress on the already damaged ball joint...Obviously this doesn't make me happy.

1) What do you guys think?
2) How costly is it for ball joint replacement?
3) My lunch buddy said they will ask me to replace both ball joints, since it makes sense to have both of them in same condition, is this right?
4) When the dealer saw the car right after this happened, and took the tire off, how could they have misdiagnosed the problem, if it was as blatant as a damaged ball joint. They should be especially careful of this right????

OK done.

Fernando

 

That girl's hot! hehe - nothing like a car-savvy girl... never had a girl telling me that my balljoints were shot!

Sorry I can't help with your problem - except that I did something similar - while being distracted, I almost ran over a mailbox!