Should the outer tie ros end "swivel" front to back by hand?

[jaymac77]

I'm trying to confirm if a mechanic's diagnosis is correct. Here's the background:
'02 330xi
93,xxx miles
rattling/knocking sound from front end over bumpy surfaces, constant since last weekend.
Steering is FINE. No wiggles, shakes, etc.
When I push down hard on the passenger side front corner, I can hear and feel a knock. Nothing on the drivers' side.
When I jacked the car up, no bushings were torn, and nothing could be shaken loose by hand.
I took it to an indy, and at first he could not move anything with his prybars either. He said everything looked tight; CA's, ball joint, sway bar end links, bushings, etc. After a test drive and some more poking around, he said he found it. He showed me the pass. side TRE, and grabbed the shaft by hand and swiveled it front-to back. However, the traditional TRE daignosis of moving the wheel at 9 and 3 produced little to no movement. I said OK and asked for an estimate, fully intending to do it myself if it were the TRE.
When I got home I crawled under the car to check the driver's side out, as I'd never heard of that technique of daignosing a TRE. Turns out the drivers side swivels just as much! The bushing pretty much collapses flat when you turn it full tilt to the front or the back. So either they're both shot or they're both fine and TRE's are supposed to do that.
can anyone offer any ideas/suggestions before I order parts or let this guy work on my car?
Thanks,
Jeremy

[nathancarter]

I think the TRE is a ball joint covered by a rubber boot, not a rubber bushing. So, it should swivel as you describe. MIGHT be different for the xi, I'm not certain.

I had similar symptoms - clunking over small, sharp bumps - and replacing the control arms (worn ball joints) and control arm bushings (quite worn out, but damage to a visual inspection) fixed it completely.

[jaymac77]

Yeah, it is a ball joint, and you're right, it's a rubber boot, not a bushing. I thought it should swivel, too. I've looked up some video's on youtube, and bad TRE's seem alot more apparent when those people do the 9 & 3 test. Instant knocking I got nothing like that.
It's just weird that he couldn't produce ANY movement or knocking on the ball joints, CA's, bushings, etc. I watched him do it myself...
Anyone feel like going out and swiveling their TRE's for me ?? You don't even have to jack up the car!!
Does the pushing down on the corner to produce the knock make any sense to anyone?

[Renboy]

Tie rods are always ball joints, both inner and outer.

The best way to test the outer tie rod is to jack the wheel up, and prop something (long screw driver, prybar, etc.) between the tie rod and the steering knuckle, and put quick shots of pressure onto the bar as though you were trying to pop the ball joint up and out of the steering knuckle.

[nathancarter]

How did he (and presumably, you) test the ball joints in the control arms?

The best test that I've seen is to get a great big pair of Channel-Locks and try to "squeeze" the ball joint - if it moves at all, then it is suspect. There's a PDF around here somewhere that illustrates this.

[jaymac77]

He did both the 12 and 6 wiggle and used a prybar between the CA and the hub to see if he could produce movement. I'll see if I have channel locks big enough to try the squeeze test...

[Critter7r]

A pry bar between the CA and the hub does nothing except attempt to pry them apart further, and when the tire is off the ground, it's already pulling downward on that joint. So trying to squeeze it together is how you see if it's worn. The tie rod should swivel by hand, but there should be some resistance, it shouldn't just fop back and forth. If you can do it with two fingers, it's on it way out, if you need to wrap your hand around it to make it swivel, it's fine. Most likely culprit for a clunking is either the outer CA ball joint or a sway bar link. If your tie rod was bad enough to cause a clunking noise, you'd have no doubt that it was bad by trying to swivel it.

[jefftrucker12]

i just put new tre on mine and they should pivot like yours do. i would think its the control arm ball joints which are moving in the loose socket.

[jaymac77]

it's sounding more and more like CA. I'll try to see if I can do do any clamping or squeezing down on it. So if the tire's up in the air and the joint is decompressed, should it squeeze in at all, back to it's settled position, or it shouldn't budge whatsoever?

I'm going to start another thread to get the general consensus on the possibility of a blown strut causing these symptoms...

[Critter7r]

It shouldn't move at all.

[jaymac77]

SWEET VICTORY! I will be re-posting this entry into all the threads I've started in the past few weeks trying to diagnose this knocking which was getting worse and worse and seemed to fit no common denominator or cause. If you've come across this posting in another one of my threads, feel free to go back to the main page, as I know you're probably tired if you read the whole thing the first time

FINALLY, after trying to poke and prod and troubleshoot on my own for the last 2 weeks, including two trips to two separate indies (one of which was stumped at first, and ultimately declared it was a bad TRE because he could "swivel it by hand", even though there was no play in the joint or the 9 and 3 movement whatsoever - WTF?? The second, upon seeing me be able to budge the rotor, strut and spring ever so slightly upwards, declared it was the strut, even though with the car on the ground, it had no bounce and stabilized just like a healthy strut should...) I, with the help pf my lovely assistant (my wife), was able to get to the root of the problem. One common denominator was that I could push down on the fender and replicate the knock, but with me pushing on the fender, there was no way I could pinpoint the knock from above. So now I had my wife pushing on the fender from above while I reached my arm underneath and held onto every bushing and joint to see if I could feel the knock. I started with the rear LCA bushing for several pushes. I moved on to the front LCA ball joint. Nothing. The main Ball Joint. Nothing. The bottom of the strut. Nothing. The bottom of the sway bar end-link. Hmm. Something.... Switched positions. The top of the sway bar end-link....... TA DA!!!!!!!!!! Jack the car up, take the wheel off, and sure enough, there's a little bare metal gouged out of the bracket where the nut had been striking up and down in the bracket. I wiggled it by hand. Nothing. Tried to tighten it by wrench. Already tight. Somethin's gotta give, so I look at the angle of the joint going into the bracket. It's at a downward angle, and doesn't look quite flush, so I try turning the wheel to each extreme and tightening again. Nothing. So my little (metaphorical) light bulb goes off and I decide I should loosen it, jack the CA up until it's at normal ride height and see if I can flush it up more.

So I loosen it several turns and wiggle by hand. No play. Then, I begin to jack up the CA, little by little, centimeter at a time, until the end link completely frees itself up, and I knew I had it I retightened it, now with everything perfectly aligned, and made damn sure it was as snug and straight as possible. Mounted the wheel, dropped the car and re-tightened, and saddled up for the moment of truth down the patchwork-pavement, railroad track, pothole minefield that is my street.......PERFECT! I FIXED IT!!! (In case you can't tell, I'm a little excited right now). After 2 mis-diagnostics by "real mechanics", and several near-purchases of TRE's, new struts, new LCA and Front ball joint (xi model), New strut mount, etc., etc., it was FREE!!!
It was weighing very heavily on my mind as no one could diagnose it and I didn't want my wife to be driving around in a ticking time-bomb, not knowing if her wheel was going to fall off on the highway... Then I just found out on Sunday I have a torn CV boot on my A6, so all of that put together was really stressing me out!!
I still might never know if it was my fault that the end-link was improperly re-installed or not. I did take it off about a month ago to attempt to replace my wife's axle (bad CV joint due to an un-noticed torn boot) (twice), and ultimately I took it to the mechanic to have them do it. However, it never made that noise between the week that I attempted the swap and the time I brought it to them the following week to do it for me. Incidentally, it was the SAME mechanic who later missed the loose end-link and wanted to charge me $180 for a TRE! HA!! So, if they disconnected the end-link during their work replacing the strut, then the blamed falls on them! VICTORY AND VINDICATION!!!

So if anyone has actually bothered to read through this WHOLE thing, Thanks! And a big "THANK YOU" to everyone who offered their assistance and ideas to my attempts at diagnosing several possible culprits!! It's been fun!!

~Jeremy