New edge front suspension

[MichaelSeanGisi]

Is there an issue with the front ball joint, spindle, or control arms falling to the point where a wheel will fall off while driving? I ask because my cousin had a 2002 v-6 model where that happened. I've also seen a video of one where someone just bought their new edge and that very and thing happened shortly after. Mine is a 2004 gt with 149,000 miles on it and I'm afraid to take it long distance or on the interstate. Please advise

 

[cobrajeff96]

Never heard of such a defect that would affect a large number of these cars. But like anything, time and miles will degrade all components.

Unload the suspension with a floor jack / jack stand. Grab the tires at the 9 and 3 o'clock positions and push/pull very hard and fast. If the wheel moves independently of the brake components/spindle, your steering components are suspect. This could be tie rod, ball joint, strut mounts and strut bearing, rack.

The same procedure but now at the 12 and 6 o'clock hand positions, if there is any play, that's usually wheel bearing and to a lesser extend the aforementioned components.

Any excessive wear should be fixed immediately and never be overlooked.

 

[cobrajeff96]

I will say that aftermarket replacement wheel bearings really do suck.

 

[MichaelSeanGisi]

Thanks for all the info.

 

[shovel]

Is there an issue with the front ball joint, spindle, or control arms falling to the point where a wheel will fall off while driving? I ask because my cousin had a 2002 v-6 model where that happened.

Yes. These cars are built sort of unusually in that the weight of the car is held up by the ball joint under tension so when the ball joint fails it just drops the car, seemingly without warning.

I say seemingly because it WILL feel loose and make clunking and sometimes squeaking noises for thousands of miles before catastrophic failure but not every driver is attentive to these things so from their perspective it's "without warning".

Safe bet is to just replace the ball joints every 100k or so and sleep easy.

 

[I_LIKE_TURTLEZ]

A bit late but Mustangs are notorious for eating through suspension components. No one knows precisely why but it has to have something to do with the suspension design(basically a 1970 truck).
These cars chew up ball joints and tie rods like it's no one's business, not uncommon to see them being replaced every 30,000-50,000 miles depending on the quality of roads the car sees.

I replaced the entire front & rear suspension last year & my Cobra only has 60,000 miles on it, what's crazy is half the front suspension had already been replaced before but the control arm bushings & ball joints were toast.

 

[cobrajeff96]

First of all the SN95 wheel bearings don't have a lot of mass. Ford designed them that way so that there'd be less rolling resistance. It was the era where Ford prioritized efficiency over pretty much everything else (they literally changed an instrument cluster design in 1998 so that a single resistor could be eliminated and they'd save $0.05 per cluster).

Ford designed the correct amount of anti-dive in the front geometry but that's all they cared about (American grid straight line cruising and panic stopping when the light turns yellow). And because they didn't care to make the SN95 capable in turns, the rear suspension is even worse with a sky-high roll center and the infamous Quadra-Bind suspension linkages that flex and just beg you to stab on the gas when exiting a car show to claim lives and property.

But really, it'd be pretty damn hard to separate a wheel or spindle from the suspension, and especially hard to separate a control arm given how tough the bolts and the mounts are. You'd already be hearing them complain long before they actually give up. As long as everything is torque right and nothing squeals or clicks it should be fine. If a front wheel has a wobble to its spin while it's jacked up in the air, you might have a need to replace a wheel bearing. If while the front of the car is on jack stands and you lightly put upward pressure under a tire with a jack and you see the wheel moving independently of a control arm, that's a ball joint failure.