Split ball joint

scorched

If I could get any advice on this it would be great... I know next to nothing about cars.

Got my MOT done 3 weeks ago, to pass it needed 3 new tyres and new gaitors on the front two wheels. There was also an advisory note that I've only paid attention to now, "nearside front suspension arm has slight play in a ball joint". I also had the wheels realigned.

So on Sunday I'm driving around a car park and I hear a clunk and I can't control the car anymore. I get out and the passenger wheel is at almost a 90 degree angle to the car, has a rod from the wheel on the ground, and some sort of oil is leaking onto the road.

Called Green Flag and in the meantime as chance would have it, a car mechanic passes by and stops to have a look. Says that something (can't remember what he called it) has popped out and should be easy enough to pop back in, then I just need to top up the gear oil. He manages to do this and he shows me this bolt by the wheel that is very loose and this is why it happened. We push it off the road as a temporary fix and I wait for the tow truck to arrive. When he arrives he says the ball joint is split and needs to be replaced.

So my questions really are... would a loose bolt (it's right by the ball joint) cause a ball joint to split? Since in the MOT it stated 'slight play', not 'split', so I'm wondering which came first. Would a ball joint split in 3 weeks? When the garage was doing the MOT, changing the tyres and gaitors, realigning the wheels, would they have needed to come into contact with this bolt at all?

It just seems fishy to me that I've been driving this car for a year with no problems, and just after I've had the MOT and work done, this happens. Could it be due to negligence by the garage or just inevitable from the ball joint wearing down, I have no idea, but I would have thought that something that could cause the wheel to fall out would have been dangerous enough to fail an MOT.

Limey

The rod that came detatched would have been the steering rod, this would have been loosened and adjusted to do the tracking on your car.

If by gaitors you mean the steering gaitors then the this again requires removal of the steering arms from the hubs.

From what the mechanic who assisted you says implies the driveshaft popped out, this may have occured due to the angle the wheel ended up at pulling it beyond the range of movement of the CV joints.

I imagine all the excess movement could result in the damage to the balljoint gaitor.

scorched

Thanks for the reply, some of it went over my head, can I just clarify... so the bolt that the mechanic said was loose may be the cause for the initial wheel coming out of its proper place, therefore the driveshaft popped out and also in the process the ball joint split?

Thanks again, and sorry for my lack of knowledge...

Edit: from the MOT, the gaitors that were replaced were 'constant velocity joint gaitors'.

s_b

Limey is wrong
car had cv boots done
one of the balljoints wasnt positioned inthe hole in the hub because of the pinch bolt had gone missing and subsequently popped out causing driveshaft to pull out of the gearbox
you are very lucky this didnt happen on an open road

complain

catflea

Yes scortched, entirely possible and feasible that the loose pinch bolt could have caused the splitting of the joint, the wheel dislocating and driveshaft pulling out. I'm assuming of course we are talking a front wheel drive car...

The rover got an advisory on a ball joint this year, being less than £8 for the part, I got it swapped out (by my brother) and the old one was well and truly knackered it would likely have given up the ghost fairly soon. The problem is that you cannot inspect them properly without full removal.

scorched

Thanks for the replies, I am now contacting the garage about it.

Limey

s_b wrote: »

Limey is wrong
car had cv boots done
one of the balljoints wasnt positioned inthe hole in the hub because of the pinch bolt had gone missing and subsequently popped out causing driveshaft to pull out of the gearbox
you are very lucky this didnt happen on an open road

complain

Wasn't sure if it was CV gaitors or Steering rack gaitors that had been done. For the wheel to end up in a 90 degree turn I guessed that something on the steering rack-trackrod end had come detatched.

I imagine if a ball joint had popped out the lower suspension arm would no longer be attached to the hub leading to a far more dramatic effect that could not simply be popped back in at the side of the road.

Either which way this is a severe oversight by the garage and potentially lethal. I'd look into getting a report from the recovery company to back up your claim.

forgotmyname

Having the wheels re-aligned with a worn joint was a waste of money.

The slight play may have lasted until the next MOT without issue. But you got the alignment done which
could have put the joint in a worse position that 3 weeks previously at the MOT.

An MOT after the adjustment may have failed.

Any slight wear or noise on the suspension should be investigated and changed immediately.

mikey72

The ball joints would all have been removed normally to replace the cv gaiters, so maybe it wasn't tightened back up correctly.

Limey

mikey72 wrote: »

The ball joints would all have been removed normally to replace the cv gaiters, so maybe it wasn't tightened back up correctly.

I still don't think it was a ball joint failure (bolt or otherwise) but until the OP says otherwise I guess we won't know.

I don't know what car it is but I could remove the driveshafts from all my Toyota's (MR2, Celica and Hilux Surf) without having to remove a ball joint.

rodenal

For the driveshaft to come out it sounds much more like the pinch bolt was either left off or not tightened at all, quite a poor mistake to make and whilst everyone is human I'd expect them to rectify the resultant damage.