Front ball joints

I am in the middle of a nut and bolt restoration of my 1982 GTS. as I take apart the front suspension, I find that both upper and lower ball joints have no slop or play them, although they are easy to move around. They feel very dry.
When I restored my Pantera 20 years ago, which has almost identical suspension, I replaced two of the ball joints, and the other two I just drilled and added grease Zirk so that I could just add some grease.
Does anyone have any experience greasing the stock ball joints or do you think I’m better off buying new ones? The new ones are kind of pricey

 

What do you consider "pricey" and where/who are you looking at for parts?

Try https://www.ebay.com/str/maseratisource on Ebay.

You can get upper or lower ball joints for $100-120 each. Or you can get the complete front end upper/lower ball joints and A-arm bushings for $450.

I used them on mine and they have over 30k mi. on them with no problems!

 

How many miles on the car? If less than say 50k miles, there is probably a reasonable amount of life left in that joint.

It can be hard to detect a worn ball joint, under the high suspension load an otherwise tight feeling joint can get quite sloppy.

You can use a grease needle and pierce the boot and pump some grease in there. Clean the boot area with alcohol after, and put a dab of weatherstrip cement on the needle hole for greater certainty of the boot remaining sealed from the elements.

 

30K miles

each ball joint is not that expensive but it all adds up quickly.
the old ones feel reasonable. it is easy to give them some new grease. i am going to replace all suspension and shock bushings. Maybe i will reuse the ball joints

i'm just recovering from the repaint-whole-car bill. i started out looking to have a couple panels buffed out and ended up with repaint entire car....

 

i live in nyc - who did the paint? are you pleased with it? what level of prep did the body shop do? thanks

 

i'll update my main build post probably next week. but here is the inside scoop.

over the years, i have worked with a true paint magician. he used to work for one body shop but he has gone solo - so he freelances work. he is based in northern New Jersey near rockaway. I put some serious cost restraints on him, and also insisted on a single stage paint. he did amazing work - and I know good and bad bodywork and paint. i mostly dissassembled the car myself. he had to do some dissassembly and reassembly - when he put the headlight buckets and door locks back, he first cleaned and greased them - stuff i didnt ask for. He does all kinds of ferrari and classic car paint over the years.

He painted my fathers silver 67 mustang - and silver metallic is really tough to make it look perfect. not only is it perfect, but when a tire came loose and scratched up the rear quarter, he painted the rear quarter and blended it so well, that you can not see any blend line at all.

His name is Rob Pilone, and I can connect you if interested. But you can't give him anymore work until he does a paint blend on the real wheel arch on my 65 mustang road race car, which came loose in the trailer (my fault) and rubbed off some paint!

 

ty for the paint info...and FWIW, I did front suspension on the mondial and the ball joints were also fine so i re-used them...and fwiw, i also have a pantera that i did in 2017 and in that case, the ball joints needed to be replaced - this is the mondial

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I hope mine can look that good someday

on the Pantera I used stock rubber bushings, but I’m thinking about using the poly ones on this car because they seem like 1000 times easier to install myself

 

I did poly in the front of my 1981.. all of the sizes are available,, and they were super easy to install

 

thanks for the positive feedback

And the good news is ... Jeg's has the A-arm poly bushings on sale now!!! great timing
now i have to find some shock bushings on sale. I think i would prefer rubber ones here...

i'm from the Bronx. We dont pay full retail for anything!

 

Do you need an alignment after it is all done

 

yes if you asking, definitely will need to set the alignment when front suspension back together. i've gotten pretty good at doing it at home with simple tools.