Suspension Question
 

Have many people had to replace ball joints on their FD's? I am installing new Superpro bushings and oem pillowballs and I started looking at the ball joints. They don't feel like they have any slop or play to them but the grease boot's seem to be showing their age. Do ball joints usually last x amount of miles and need replacing? These have 96k miles on them.

Reading the service manual, it says to replace the entire suspension arm. I don't know the cost, but I would imgine replacing all of the arms would be terribly expensive. The car will be tracked so I am trying to get the most solid suspension possible. Then again I do not want to replace parts for the sake of replacing them.

I'm in the process of replacing my entire front suspension. My car has 130k miles on it now and has been tracked often. I hear a lot of clunking noises from my front end and it got worse after my last track event even after replacing my upper control arms.

I purchased new Upper Control Arms from Mazda Motorsports. They can also be purchased from Malloy for $250 each. I definitely felt the difference but it didn't stop all the suspension noises I have been getting.

I also thought about replacing the Lower Control Arms but they are frickin expensive. I wound up getting a low mileage set from Rotary Experiment Seven to replace mine. I'll be installing the SuperPro bushings in those to test things out and see how I like the bushings. I also ordered new dust shields for the Lower Control Arm ball joints from Malloy.

fyi - Japan2LA was selling a set of low mileage ones not too long ago at a fair price.

If you are hearing noises from them and can localize it to a particular component then go for it and replace them.