A lot of effort goes into finding the most optimal paths for various aspects of life. My thoughts gravitate toward finding this on a regular basis, but the truth seems ever elusive. I get tired. I get frustrated.
Recently, my car developed a thunk going over bumps, in conjunction with a slight creak whenever I turn into the driveway at slow speeds. The thunk had gotten significantly worse over the past week, which was concerning. But how could this be? I basically replaced the front suspension over the past year and a half. What could have gone wrong?
When troubleshooting car issues that can’t be, say, electronically tested and immediately confirmed as bad, it helps to start with the least expensive replacement. I knew that I had installed the sway bar bushings while the car was up in the air. When you tighten those bushings down when the car is on jackstands, the geometry shifts when the car is lowered back down to the ground. Most people don’t think about this, and I was no exception. As a result, tiny cracks had already started to form in the rubber. I knew that when these go bad, they can actually create something of a thunking sound. “Makes sense”, I thought. They were cheap, $10 each, so I replaced them. But the thunking persisted.
Next up was the sway bar end links, which anchor the sway bar to the strut assembly. They can also make sounds, since the little ball joints can go bad. Rather than replace those, since they cost more, I decided I would swap the left and right sides and see if the sound followed the one originally installed on the passenger side. I discovered that the bolts at the bottom, which are dang near impossible get a torque wrench behind, hadn’t been torqued all too tight (who’s the dumbass who changed these?), so after swapping the sides, I made sure to torque those bottom bolts as tight as I realistically could using a ratcheting wrench. But the thunking persisted.
At this point I started to worry. Could it be the ball joint? I was sure I had torqued that to 91 foot pounds, actually 92 to get the slot to line up with the castle nut, but I remember having some vague doubts later. Could that be it? Or was my cheap-ass strut assembly defective and I needed to change that again? “Just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s good”. Could an aging axle and wheel bearing create the sound? Could my beautiful new steering rack also be bad? Or…could it be the tie rod? But I had changed that 3 years ago, and the boot wasn’t torn!
Well, the tie rod was next in line. You can get them really cheap online, but you have to wait. My desire to optimize took over and I slipped into analysis paralysis. If I ordered OEM, it would probably be the last time I’d have to replace it. But if that didn’t solve the thunk, it would mean I had spent $100 for no reason. I could order another Moog for $25, but since that’s what was already installed, would it mean I would just have to change it yet again, 3 years from now? Everything local that was in stock seemed to be stupidly priced at $60 and up, which is bullshit – never pay that much for aftermarket if you can wait a week for something to be delivered. I ultimately decided that I would find the cheapest local unit I could find. If it didn’t solve the problem, I wasn’t out very much, but I would at least know whether the tie rod was the culprit today. And if it did solve the problem, I could always decide to order a better part, and wouldn’t be out much for the cost of “diagnosis”.
I found that part for $40 and changed it, something I can now do in less than an hour, and…so far so good! The thunk is gone (we don’t need to talk about that creak, though….). I probably want to drive it over the neighborhood speed bumps a few more times to confirm, but I haven’t yet been able to reproduce that thunk.
I’m just frustrated right now. I’m trying to do the optimal thing. Sure, I could buy a new car, but they’re outrageously expensive, and I’m not interested in dropping that kind of money on them, especially since the newness only lasts so long. In my opinion, you’re basically throwing money out the window just to subsidize a few years of not having to deal with any repairs, but the day will inevitably come when repairs you shall need. Why bother when you could just buy a used car for a fraction of the price, replace a bunch of wear items, and have it driving like new? But then you do have to remember the cost of working on your car if you choose to. It’s not just the price of parts, but the price of time, and the price of following the same stupid routine to put it up on jack stands every.single.time . And sometimes you end up chasing ghost noises anyway. So much for ‘optimal’. “Optimally”, you could read a book and become a master mechanic overnight, but that’s not how the world works.
To be fair, I think I took the right course. I had reasons to believe the bushings would be bad. They are a relatively easy fix, and each bushing was $10. They kind of needed to be replaced anyway, so no harm done. I was even smart enough to jack up each wheel to get the geometry to be more accurate when I tightened them down, so I get to pat myself on the back for that, I guess.
I then decided to swap the sway bar end links. This, too, was a logical way to either eliminate or confirm the culprit. It was determined those were not the problem, and I didn’t erroneously spend any money in the process.
The next step was the outer tie rod, which was older and an aftermarket part. The thunk I was hearing was also consistent with the noise I’ve heard from obviously bad tie rods in the past, it just wasn’t as obvious this time since the boot wasn’t torn. I spent roughly $40. The next step would probably have been a ball joint, which is $60, but I recently changed that, and with OEM, so this would have been much less likely.
And to be fair, I’ve still spent under $10k on this car total, which is way cheaper than $30k.
And this is the problem with trying to find the “optimal” solution: sometimes there is none. Sometimes there are just too many factors. One person says do this, another says do that, but which is right? It’s easy for me to talk about the virtues of doing the work yourself, but that’s coming from somebody who enjoys the process and the challenge, and also has money to dump into expensive OEM parts. Ooooh, big shot, guess you got it all figured out, huh? Ya jackass. And then stuff like this crops up that you don’t expect, because shouldn’t those tie rods have lasted more than 3 years? Makes me want to buy OEM for everything. Sick of this crap.
Troubleshooting +100 experience points, or something like that, I guess. Pain in my ass.
I’m really not opposed to buying a $4k car and immediately putting another $4k in parts into it. That make it an $8k that is barely worth half of that, but at least you could rest easy that most of the parts are quality and you probably won’t need to change them for another 5-10 years (at least). Is it still optimal if it gets into an accident, though? Or if the transmission fails?
That…depends. If that doesn’t happen and you keep the car for another 10 years, definitely worth it. Under other circumstances……
I don’t know. I guess that’s what I’m trying to say. I don’t know. I don’t know! I think I might just replace both tie rods with OEM because that’s just…what I would prefer to do. There you have it. Raw subjectivity. Could I save money by putting some Moogs in again? Probably. Do I care? Yes and no, but honestly….I just prefer OEM.
Now I need to spend some time pontificating about life, because of some goddamn tie rods. Sigh.
EDIT (12/21/2021): I was actually wrong, it was the strut. But putting my shoulder into it, I was able to push down on the front fender and hear a pop, and by putting one hand at the base below the coil spring, I could actually feel the pop, too. Changing the strut assembly eliminated both noises I was hearing. It pays to test on the same speed bumps, too, which is how I got this wrong, but I’m planning to write about this adventure some other day. Worth noting, however, is that all 4 struts are aftermarket assemblies. Figures.