What do you guys think??

Driving the Metro to work this morning, At about 55mph the front started shaking and pounding really bad. Only under acceleration it did this.

Everytime I got to about 50mph it did it again. On the way home the car was great at 65mph. Got on the back road and it started again. So I babied the car and got home and jacked it up.

CV halfshafts are great with no splits. Motor mounts apear to be fine. No ice in any of the rims. So I checked the ball joints and the passenger side one has a split in the rubber but doesn't move. The drivers side doesn't move with your hand but when you take your knee and smack it (don't hit the rim, hurts like hell) you can see the ball joint wobble back and forth.

Believe I found my problem. In past articles, when their talking Mapp gas, can you get to the front bolts under the carpet? To help loosen them.
And I'd imagine you'd need an alignment afterwards. Bet thats cheap!

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/3024/1011190lk0.jpg

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/8084/1011191un3.jpg

what exactly are we looking at

the ball joint? is this causing your problems?

i remember about a year ago, someone replaced one of my tie rod ends.

Yes this is a ball joint. I bought a little MAPP gas torch to assist in getting the bolts out. Don't have a choice in replacing the control arms.

I'll take a bunch of pics documenting how to replace these. With no responses on this board it doesn't sound like anyone has really tackled them before.

Yes, I've taken out the control arm on the driver side to replace one of the bushings. It was quite easy to take out the control arm. Replacing the bushing was a differnt matter though - I destroyed a 12 ton hydraulic press pressing the new bushing in. The old one came out easily. I've since upgraded to a 20 Ton press....

However, I have 2000 and the car has lived all its life here in Socal so none of the bolts were rusted or anything.

As for alignment - no you do not need one. When you put on the new conrol arm just hand tighen the bolts, get it back on the ground and push the car down a few times to stablize the suspension. Then tighen the bolts.

Make sure to tighen them to the correct torque.

Okay awesome. Just bought a little MAPP gas torch.

Found them on ebay for 100 versus autozone for 200.00. Think I'll go that route.

They don't look like there too difficult to replace. But I'll take alot of pictures and do a tutorial for anyone else while I'm at it.

Yes, as you've noticed you cannot replace to ball joint - you have to change out the whole control arm. But you get new bushings with it also so that's a good thing. The MAPP torch is a good idea - other things what would help are some penetrating oil, an impact wrench, a long breaker bar and hammer - anything to help in case it is truly stuck. If it is really stuck you can always drill the bolt out and get new bolts.

Pics would be good for everyone here. DoctorBill has some nice pics on this site. I have a stack of pics showing the metro's automatic being torn down and rebuilt - I may post them up one day if can get the time to mark the pics with descriptions...