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So today i am replacing another Lemfoerder front lower control arm. Its got only about 9k miles on it and already has play again. When i was doing some suspension work earlier this year i found that the ball joints were pretty dry.
So this time before mounting the new control arm i looked to see how much grease comes pre installed in the ball joints.
THAT is WAY to little in my opinion
So i filled it and will see how long they last this time.
So next time you install a new control arm you might want to check the ball joints to see how much grease is pre installed.
I guess if that white blob of grease in your first pic was evenly spread over the whole metal contact surface (ball and hollow inside surface), that might be a lot better too.
That little bit of grease seems like was squeezed in the bearing after joint assembly. The grease does not do anything if it is not under that ball between metal surfaces.
Did you wiggle the bearing to get the grease go where it needs to be?
Best medicine would be to drill and tap a hole for a grease nipple that puts grease in the correct place.
It might even help in this case to heat the arm to liquify the grease so it would flow between surfaces. Heating needs to be gentle not to burn the grease.
I fitted new arms by febe-bilstein and they were knocking at 3k - I refitted the 50k mile originals - after buying a secondhand arm just to get the boot that had a nice screwdriver hole after going in to the UK's premier merc dealership...
there is NOTHING wrong with the joints on the bilstein arms (tight as hell) - BUT the conical joke fitting that connects to the strut by pure luck is the wrong shape and creates slop where there shouldn't be any !!!
Benzo....a dry joint wont necessarily knock. There has to be play for it to knock. I chased a knock a long time and in the end it turned out to be the sway bar (the actual bar...not the links). You can disconnect the sway bar links on both sides and drive around a bit (the car will sway much more but its ok) to see if the knock goes away....if it does its either the links or the bar itself.
Benzo....a dry joint wont necessarily knock. There has to be play for it to knock. I chased a knock a long time and in the end it turned out to be the sway bar (the actual bar...not the links). You can disconnect the sway bar links on both sides and drive around a bit (the car will sway much more but its ok) to see if the knock goes away....if it does its either the links or the bar itself.
Good Luck
Brand new oem sway bar and links, torqued by wis specs. Sway needed to go anyway as left side bushing had play. But sometimes knocking noise present when hitting bump or turning at slow speed, making me think I should slip the boots off and check the lemforder arms.
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