I am diagnosing very slight memory steer. I've got the car off the ground, outer tie rod ends disconnected and the wheels/tires off. When I grab the knuckle to turn it on either side it seems like a lot of resistance but I don't have the experience to say for sure.

I put a cheapo spring scale on it and clipped it onto the knuckle. The right side took about 10 lbs of force to start to turn, and the left side was off the scale but felt like ~12 or 13 lbs. The motion is super smooth and equally stiff throughout the range. The ball joints are not clicking or loose. The strut top mounts are lubed up and move smoothly too.

Thanks!

 

when was it last aligned? My wild guess is a caster issue.

 

I had it aligned last year, I have the MTheory R+P setup installed and the spec for castor is ~5.5° and a smidge of toe in, which I've got.

I was mostly curious about the effort of rotating the strut assembly with the outer tie rod ends disconnected...I was surprised how much effort it took by hand, but I don't know what's normal for our cars.

 

It should be practically zero effort. The ball joint is a low friction design and the strut rotates on a bearing, strut shaft and all, which is somewhat rare.

Do you have greaseable ball joints? Greaseable joints are usually high friction and are the devil. They also don't last nearly as long.

Do you have OE strut mounts or some pillow ball setup?

 

Thanks @peejay . I have the OE strut tops and what appear to be the original ball joints in the original front control arms. They don't appear to be greasable.

So I guess the alternatives are to get new control arms or just ball joints and have them tack welded in? What's the consensus these days? The T3 stuff looks nice but I wonder about nvh and of course there's the cost.

 

Before going that far, it's not too much of a bear (hopefully) to unbolt the steering arm from the strut housing to isolate the ball joint and strut top from each other.

 

I've done as you suggest (good suggestion!) and the top mounts move freely but the knuckle and ball joints are very tight, not greaseable. They are the original pressed in ball joints. The boots are in great shape though. I'd pull the boots to inspect, but I need the car together to go to the body shop on Monday.

I've ordered 2 of these guys, not a bad deal and they appear have the knurling for grip.