I hate when people always assume the dealer is being deceptive. If you question anything they say, drive up to the dealer and make them show you the problem. I have been a tech for 15 yrs and can't stand when a customer thinks we are trying to BS them by selling them something. You have every right to come see what is being recommended or what has failed. If the dealer is lying to you, it will be caught when you have them show you the car. Plenty of parts out there are not serviceable when it comes to factory OEM parts. This is why the dealer gave you the price for the entire arm. There may be aftermarket joints available but don't expect the dealer to replace them. But understand parts fail at any time. I have seen cars go 50 miles when a rod bearing failed. I have seen the same cars go 250k miles with no engine issues.
Didn't say the shop was lying necessarily just wanted a second opinion as to the root cause of the failure. Having worked at a FCA dealership I have seen techs make a best guess and others advise work when they aren't fully confident of the solution. Sometimes they throw darts. I'll admit they should be more qualified to "guess" than I am, but mistakes can be made and solutions can be over-engineered to hit their billable hours. I've seen it first hand.
Anyways, we put it on an alignment lift this weekend with a buddy who IS a certified mechanic. We isolated the sound to the steering knuckle. Our "guess" is that the ball joints is not seated right in the knuckle and the popping is some minute movement of the ball joint in the knuckle.
We confirmed this by (1) adding a zerk fitting to the existing ball joint and adding grease which resulted in no change.
(2) Next we tightened the nut on the lower ball joint and confirmed the sound could be replicated as we tightened the nut with a wrench. You could feel it in the steering knuckle assembly but not in the actual LCA if you put a wrench on the lower ball joint shift and applied pressure it would make the popping noise (although there was no actual discernible movement in the ball joints shaft)
We tightening the lower ball joint nut and after some repeated movement in the steering wheel lock to lock it was quiet. I put 100+miles on this weekend since and have not heard the noise.
It could be the mating surface of the control arm or ball joint were out of spec or damaged at some point previously, but we found nothing in our visual inspection.
I plan to drive it for a week or two and see if the sound returns. If it does I plan to replace the LCA assembly, but my opinion is that just because it makes a sound doesn't mean anything is necessarily "broken" or functioning improperly this case. But I expect it will return soon and that replacing the lower control arm would resolve the issue as we found nothing wrong with the upper and feel we have isolated the source of the sound to the lower ball joint/LCA.
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