After 397,000 miles on the original suspension, my car is in desperate need of a refreshing, along with some other preventive maintenance. I tried to hold out for 400k, but the tires have worn so badly that they are no longer safe to roll on and I refuse to put on new tires without doing something about the completely and utterly slacked out suspension. So, it’s getting a total rebuild of just about every suspension part on the car, plus some needed preventive maintenance like a timing chain and valve adjustment and such.
I read a thread here a while back about the relative value of a car and the cost of repairs and maintenance, where the less a car is worth, how much is a reasonable amount to put into repairs? More recently, I saw it stated that old cars weren’t worth putting money into. I’ve thought about this problem for a while, as my car has reached a point where it needs, from a critical standpoint, a number of things done to it, and could use a number of other preventive maintenance performed, but it is on the backside of its useful life and its sentimental value probably outruns its monetary value.
My basic reasoning is this. If I sink $1700.00 into it, that would be about 5 months of payments on a new car. If it extends the life of my car for another few years and 150,000 miles, then its money well spent. As a side note, I still like my car and have sentimental attachment to it. It won’t hurt my feelings one bit to continue to drive it.
On the other hand, there are limits. I can’t afford to put OEM replacement parts on the car at this time, so I’ve shopped heavily in the aftermarket realm. I know many members on this forum live and die by OEM parts and wouldn’t venture elsewhere, but time, money and schedule means I need to do this now, I need to do it all at once, and I have to do so on a budget. Up front, the only OEM thing my car is getting is a timing chain, everything else is aftermarket. I’ll try to express my opinions on the stuff I bought when I’m done, good and bad, and hopefully be able to provide some insight as to what goes well and what doesn’t.
So yesterday we began the rebuild. Here’s the obligatory pile o’ parts picture:
![Image]()
Teardown of the front was relatively painless and yielded a couple of surprises. First, the ball joints were not in as bad a shape as I expected them to be. The uppers were still tight and seemingly fine, the bottoms were not as tight but were not slacked to the point of looseness and rattling that I’ve seen in others. Same story with the tie rod ends. Second, the front bushings of the lower control arms were absolutely shot, with cracks all the way through and chunks missing. I would say these were the worst components on the front suspension in terms of shape, and this was the better of the two.
![Image]()
The CV shafts were also garbage by this point, but I could hear and feel that for a long time and was expected.
Pressing the old wheel bearings out and the new ones in is a time consuming, awkward job. The design of the knuckle makes it hard to fit into a press properly, but otherwise it’s pretty straight forward. We couldn’t use the press with the lower ball joint, since there is no way we could chuck it up in the press properly, so we had to hammer the old ball joints out. We used a ball joint press tool to push in the new ones. The first knuckle took a bit, just cause we were figuring it out as we went, the second went quicker.
I’ve read on several places that the front sway bar bushings are difficult to change, but we managed to get them done without too much trouble. We undid the front bolts of the bracket and pried the bracket up, which allowed just enough room to wiggle the old sway bar bushings out and to fit the new ones, the used pry bar and large channel locks to get the bracket back into place and bolted. I wouldn’t change them regularly this way, but for a one time deal at this mileage, it worked. The old bushings didn’t look horrible, but were definitely worn.
Couple of impressions on the parts. The Mevotech stuff I got with the front end look fine, metal wise, but I wasn’t too impressed with the composition of the ball joint boots. They seemed too stiff and almost kinda brittle, like a lot of flexing would crack them very quickly. We’ll see. The uppers are greaseable, but the bottoms are not, so we were sure to grease them well before putting the new control arms on. The fitment of the control arms was good and they bolted right up. So far, aside from my impressions on the ball joint boots, the aftermarket parts I bought seem to be alright, at least from an installation point of view.
With all the junk out of the way in the wheel well, we thought it would be a good idea to start dealing with the timing chain and valve adjustment, and replacing the motor mounts while we are at it. This is a more annoying job than I expected, as there is little room to work. These are the times when having good tools pay off. That didn’t stop us from having some issues.
The motor has never been opened at all and everything was tightly stuck together. With the high mileage of the car, I was interested to see how much buildup we would find under the valve cover. While there is some gunk on the cover, overall I was very happy with how clean everything looked underneath. The only real gunk was on the valve cover itself.
![Image]()
![Image]()
Couple things we found right away – the motor mounts, if not totally broken, are completely wore out. This is the failed motor mount on the right side of the motor. The front mount was still together, but it was not in good shape.
![Image]()
Second, the VTC solenoid is one of the worst designs in history. Despite our best efforts not to do so, since we’ve seen it before, we still managed to break the thing in half trying to get it out, and we spent a while extracting the broken remaining piece from the head.
![Image]()
At that point, we called it a night.
Hopefully, we can finish up today, and I’ll post an update later.
Here is a list of parts going on the car….
APWI CV shafts
DEA motor and transmission mounts
Mevotech tie rod ends
Mevotech lower ball joints
Mevotech upper and lower control arms
Sensen struts
WJB rear wheel bearings and hubs
Centric front wheel bearings
Beck front sway bar links and bushings
Mevotech rear sway bar links
Beck/Arnley rear sway bar bushings
Westar strut mount hardware front and rear
Beck/Arnley rear arms
Beck/Arnley rear control arms
Beck/Arnley lateral links
Mas forward trailing arms
OEM Timing chain
Four Seasons Fan Motor
MOOG rear upper control arms
Dextero tires
Dorman VTC solenoid
I read a thread here a while back about the relative value of a car and the cost of repairs and maintenance, where the less a car is worth, how much is a reasonable amount to put into repairs? More recently, I saw it stated that old cars weren’t worth putting money into. I’ve thought about this problem for a while, as my car has reached a point where it needs, from a critical standpoint, a number of things done to it, and could use a number of other preventive maintenance performed, but it is on the backside of its useful life and its sentimental value probably outruns its monetary value.
My basic reasoning is this. If I sink $1700.00 into it, that would be about 5 months of payments on a new car. If it extends the life of my car for another few years and 150,000 miles, then its money well spent. As a side note, I still like my car and have sentimental attachment to it. It won’t hurt my feelings one bit to continue to drive it.
On the other hand, there are limits. I can’t afford to put OEM replacement parts on the car at this time, so I’ve shopped heavily in the aftermarket realm. I know many members on this forum live and die by OEM parts and wouldn’t venture elsewhere, but time, money and schedule means I need to do this now, I need to do it all at once, and I have to do so on a budget. Up front, the only OEM thing my car is getting is a timing chain, everything else is aftermarket. I’ll try to express my opinions on the stuff I bought when I’m done, good and bad, and hopefully be able to provide some insight as to what goes well and what doesn’t.
So yesterday we began the rebuild. Here’s the obligatory pile o’ parts picture:
Teardown of the front was relatively painless and yielded a couple of surprises. First, the ball joints were not in as bad a shape as I expected them to be. The uppers were still tight and seemingly fine, the bottoms were not as tight but were not slacked to the point of looseness and rattling that I’ve seen in others. Same story with the tie rod ends. Second, the front bushings of the lower control arms were absolutely shot, with cracks all the way through and chunks missing. I would say these were the worst components on the front suspension in terms of shape, and this was the better of the two.
The CV shafts were also garbage by this point, but I could hear and feel that for a long time and was expected.
Pressing the old wheel bearings out and the new ones in is a time consuming, awkward job. The design of the knuckle makes it hard to fit into a press properly, but otherwise it’s pretty straight forward. We couldn’t use the press with the lower ball joint, since there is no way we could chuck it up in the press properly, so we had to hammer the old ball joints out. We used a ball joint press tool to push in the new ones. The first knuckle took a bit, just cause we were figuring it out as we went, the second went quicker.
I’ve read on several places that the front sway bar bushings are difficult to change, but we managed to get them done without too much trouble. We undid the front bolts of the bracket and pried the bracket up, which allowed just enough room to wiggle the old sway bar bushings out and to fit the new ones, the used pry bar and large channel locks to get the bracket back into place and bolted. I wouldn’t change them regularly this way, but for a one time deal at this mileage, it worked. The old bushings didn’t look horrible, but were definitely worn.
Couple of impressions on the parts. The Mevotech stuff I got with the front end look fine, metal wise, but I wasn’t too impressed with the composition of the ball joint boots. They seemed too stiff and almost kinda brittle, like a lot of flexing would crack them very quickly. We’ll see. The uppers are greaseable, but the bottoms are not, so we were sure to grease them well before putting the new control arms on. The fitment of the control arms was good and they bolted right up. So far, aside from my impressions on the ball joint boots, the aftermarket parts I bought seem to be alright, at least from an installation point of view.
With all the junk out of the way in the wheel well, we thought it would be a good idea to start dealing with the timing chain and valve adjustment, and replacing the motor mounts while we are at it. This is a more annoying job than I expected, as there is little room to work. These are the times when having good tools pay off. That didn’t stop us from having some issues.
The motor has never been opened at all and everything was tightly stuck together. With the high mileage of the car, I was interested to see how much buildup we would find under the valve cover. While there is some gunk on the cover, overall I was very happy with how clean everything looked underneath. The only real gunk was on the valve cover itself.
Couple things we found right away – the motor mounts, if not totally broken, are completely wore out. This is the failed motor mount on the right side of the motor. The front mount was still together, but it was not in good shape.
Second, the VTC solenoid is one of the worst designs in history. Despite our best efforts not to do so, since we’ve seen it before, we still managed to break the thing in half trying to get it out, and we spent a while extracting the broken remaining piece from the head.
At that point, we called it a night.
Hopefully, we can finish up today, and I’ll post an update later.
Here is a list of parts going on the car….
APWI CV shafts
DEA motor and transmission mounts
Mevotech tie rod ends
Mevotech lower ball joints
Mevotech upper and lower control arms
Sensen struts
WJB rear wheel bearings and hubs
Centric front wheel bearings
Beck front sway bar links and bushings
Mevotech rear sway bar links
Beck/Arnley rear sway bar bushings
Westar strut mount hardware front and rear
Beck/Arnley rear arms
Beck/Arnley rear control arms
Beck/Arnley lateral links
Mas forward trailing arms
OEM Timing chain
Four Seasons Fan Motor
MOOG rear upper control arms
Dextero tires
Dorman VTC solenoid
