Laters
Active Member
I had a weird feeling/noise appear on my c class (w202) when on or near full lock. It had been doing it since I bought the car but had got worse in the last few weeks 
. No noise over pot holes though 
.
I decided to check for any play anywhere and couldn't feel a lot but there was a little.
Got 2 new lower ball joints and fitted them today. Apart from having to take the disks and brake calipers off (so I could slacken the backplates and get enough room to remove/refit the ball joints
) all went quite smoothly 
.
One of the locating pins decided to stick in the upright but that was easy to fix as the locating pin in the new ball joint pulled out without much force (and was exactly the same size) so I refitted the new ball joint leaving the pin in the upright .
The old ball joints were very loose and quite badly worn .
I guess they were the originals and the car has 74,000 miles.
After putting it back together it doesn't wander at speed and the weird feeling has stopped . Strange thing is I hadn't really noticed it wandering until it doesn't anymore. Its a lot nicer to drive at speed 
.
All in all not to bad to do apart from the nut that you cant get to on the ball joint and the only tool I had to fit it was a big open ended spanner 
.
One thing I did notice was the front brake disks are corroding badly (from the outside inward) on the back side (hidden by the backplate) so they are next on the list to be changed (next week) after I have checked the back discs for the same problem.
I suppose it doesn't get used enough during the summer when the weather is ok & I use the quantum. Next year I must remember to drive the merc a few miles every week.
Got both sides done within 3 to 4 hours and the cost of the ball joints etc was a lot cheaper than the last car I had to put ball joints on (honda aerodeck) & the job was a lot easier to do on the merc
. No noise over pot holes though .I decided to check for any play anywhere and couldn't feel a lot but there was a little.
Got 2 new lower ball joints and fitted them today. Apart from having to take the disks and brake calipers off (so I could slacken the backplates and get enough room to remove/refit the ball joints
) all went quite smoothly .One of the locating pins decided to stick in the upright
but that was easy to fix as the locating pin in the new ball joint pulled out without much force (and was exactly the same size) so I refitted the new ball joint leaving the pin in the upright .The old ball joints were very loose and quite badly worn
. I guess they were the originals and the car has 74,000 miles.
After putting it back together it doesn't wander at speed and the weird feeling has stopped
. Strange thing is I hadn't really noticed it wandering until it doesn't anymore. Its a lot nicer to drive at speed .All in all not to bad to do apart from the nut that you cant get to on the ball joint
and the only tool I had to fit it was a big open ended spanner .One thing I did notice was the front brake disks are corroding badly
(from the outside inward) on the back side (hidden by the backplate) so they are next on the list to be changed (next week) after I have checked the back discs for the same problem.I suppose it doesn't get used enough during the summer when the weather is ok & I use the quantum. Next year I must remember to drive the merc a few miles every week.
Got both sides done within 3 to 4 hours and the cost of the ball joints etc was a lot cheaper than the last car I had to put ball joints on (honda aerodeck) & the job was a lot easier to do on the merc
