Ok so lately my steering has been beyond heavy, I mean two arms to turn old ford truck heavy. Checked and rechecked the rack, mounts you name it. One my way home today thankfully about 2.5 blocks away and 25 mph there was a loUD clunk a LOUDER Bang then smoke and screeching crunching noises! My lower ball joint seperated! It WAS a mazda part only about a year old and with about 2500 miles. So I walked home took one off the locost packed up tools and hiked back to the side of the road and swapped it out. So now its back together, just need an new RPF1 wheel, front tire and alignment. But the thing that has me rather nervous is why the heck did it happen and is it a common thing or was this just a freak one in a million shot? I will be running time trials next weekend and I'm rather nervous of it happening at track speeds... Should I buy another new one and replace the other side or am I just being paranoid? With the new one in my steering now feels just like it should.
been there, done that.. just not in a miata. the Fiat community had a HUGE batch of bad ball joints for a while. I had one with 5000 miles on it blow apart into 4 pieces.
Pretty scary when it happens. Glad you only ruined a rim in the process
Yikes! I have a balljoint with a bit of play, and i've been putting off replacing it. Clearly i need to get that done!
Balljoint separations always suck. 
Glad you're OK.
what did it do to the rim? I just can't see in my head how a ball joint would ruin a rim...maybe I am just stupid...
moxnix
New Reader
7/9/09 7:58 p.m.
I have not heard about it with the mazda parts. I have seen it happen to two other ball joints but both were cheap ebay ball joints.
If your other one is from the same timeframe I would be looking at replacing it for piece of mind.
Brust
Reader
7/9/09 11:40 p.m.
Unfortunately, the miata ball joints "pull" on the ball as if trying to pull it out of the socket- if the ball pulls out of the socket, the lower control arm will ding up the inner part of the wheel sum'in fierce.
I'd probably replace both of 'em with new ones, but you now know the symptom of a worn balljoint, so should have at least a few miles warning.
Had that happen the my 9C1. Good thing I was going backwards at 5 mph. Replaced uppers and lowers for piece of mind.
That's a strut front suspension, right? So you could rig up a fail safe to hold the ball joint together should it fail.
I might go to the Mazda dealer with the part in hand and see if I could get lucky. But even if I couldn't, I'd be pretty inclined to buy an OEM replacement. Mmmm, maybe I'd check with the likes of Flying Miata as well. OEM is far better than cheap ebay junk, but there are better makers than OEM. Just don't know if they make Miata ball joints.
foxtrapper wrote:
That's a strut front suspension, right? So you could rig up a fail safe to hold the ball joint together should it fail.
Nope -- wishbones and coil-overs on all four corners.
