Understanding the Importance of Ball Joints

Nancy explains the importance of Ball Joints and why you don’t want them to fail on your vehicle!

Transcript:

Can you imagine driving down the road and suddenly your wheel breaks off and folds in? Pretty scary feeling. Hi, I’m Nancy at Kneble’s Auto Service Center and this actually happened to one of our customers who bought a used vehicle. Now, let me just say he didn’t take it to us prior to buying the car because we will do a free inspection, courtesy to our customers. Now you say, “What caused this problem?”

Well, over time his ball joint wore out and broke, causing the entire wheel to fold in towards the car. Ball joints all in the car are like our hip socket. The ball joint allows for the wheel to pivot as you steer the vehicle. Now, since you readily can’t see the condition of the ball joint unless you crawl under the car and look, there are some things that you can listen for signaling an impending problem.

Number one, a clunking noise, rattle, or knock, or even a squeak can be heard in the front end as you’re driving, especially over bumps. Number two, a vibration suspension because ball joints wear out and they get loose in their sockets, and with the motion, they can vibrate and this can be felt in the steering. Number three, a wandering steering wheel, which means when the steering wheel drifts left to right on its own.

Now, ball joints are an important part of your vehicle suspension, so if you think there’s a possibility that any of these symptoms are in your car, please go to your automotive technician and have them inspect the vehicle. You certainly don’t want a wheel breaking off. Absolutely not. Thank you for watching, and if you like this video, thumbs up and press the share button because we don’t want anyone’s wheel falling off. If you have a comment or something happened to you, enter it in the comments below. Thank you again.