Bad bearings and everything else

[Eric2.0]

1999 Mystique/ztech 4cl.

Ok now the front end sounds like it's grinding bolts and wal-nuts as I drive. Scraping metal turning right and just awful.

I put the front end in the air and put it in drive to see what was going on(I was safe) I let the wheels free wheel in drive on jack stands. On the right the wheel bearing is shot because I hear it grind and the wheel chucks. On the left it seems ok, but it sounds like everything is gone.

Will just a bad bearing sound like the entire front end is falling off?

I tried yesterday to fix it, removed everything to take the spindle off, but that damn Torx head bolt stripped so now I can't remove the pinch bolt on the lower ball joint. Now I have to remove the entire control arm with spindle attached and get it heated up and remove that bolt somehow.

Why don't they just put a regular hex head bolt there? A torx head? It stripped out in like two seconds when I put the wrench to it.

When that happened I kicked a bag of tin cans across the floor. So frustrating. I hate FWD cars so much.

 

[svtguy27]

You should probably buy a new balljoint anyway. A new balljoint comes with a hex head bolt. Plus the stock bolt is a torque to fail anyway iirc. They aren't expensive and it's fairly easy to do. Btw I stripped out that head too. After about a day of fighting with it I ended up having to use a lug nut extractor socket over the head of it. Which worked like a champ.

 

[tsSVT]

The ball joint bolt is not TTY. You both may want to look into a better socket or something as torx bolts are normally very hard to strip as long as you seat the socket properly. Given the size of the bolt and the fact that you will need to replace it anyway you can try to use a set of visegrips to get them off.

 

[svtguy27]

Vise grips didn't work. Believe me I had tried it all. But that was a long time ago. I thought they might have been torque to fail because both of mine were bent when i removed them. But I was just sharing my experiences and what worked for me. BTW I was using a matco socket so i don't think that was the problem lol. It might have been because corrosion is worse up in the places where we live.

 

[tsSVT]

Big bummer dude! I think you are right, may have something to do with corrosion. That's frightening that those bolts were bent! Was anything else damaged? As far as I know none of the bolts in the front suspension are TTY. I could be wrong though...

 

[amc49]

They may well not be TTY, but Ford generally strongly suggests changing those bolts everytime they are loosened. In fact they seem to pretty much suggest changing every front end suspension part bolt that has been removed; probably a product liability thing.