Grease being flung by tires... ball joints?

[BartusCompater]

About two or three weeks ago I got out of the Spider and noticed that there was a handful of grease spattered across the passenger side of the car:




Front Passenger-Side Tire


Rear Passenger-Side Tire


After doing some research online I thought that maybe this meant I could have a failing ball joint, and that perhaps this would account for some of the suspension related "clonking" noises I've been hearing while accelerating and going over speed bumps. So I jacked up the car today hoping to find some more grease underneath the car in the wheel well and around the ball joints but I wasn't really able to detect anything with my limited knowledge. Perhaps my diagnosis was wrong.

Either way, I took some more pictures, I was wondering if you guys could bounce some ideas off of me. Here they are:


Front passenger-side upper ball joint.


Front passenger-side lower ball joint


Under the lower joint.


I'm thinking this is probably unrelated to the grease, but maybe could account for some of the noise. This bar at the rear has been bent for some time.


Probably also unrelated to the grease, but maybe in some way accountable for the noise. I noticed that the the second set of clips on this control arm is missing the thicker clip you can see in the first set.

So the car has been parked for a while. Today was my first chance to jack the car up and take a look under there. I'm a little disappointed that I couldn't come to any firm conclusions myself, since now I'm going to have to have to wait before ordering parts. The car is parked, don't want to risk having the wheel part ways with the rest of the car.

[manoa matt]

If its on the passenger front and passenger rear fender and rocker panels, I would suspect you ran through a puddle or near some road work.

The front stub axle/hub uses grease, while the rear axle uses oil. The only area that would actually fling grease would be the stub axle/hub. You would have to be missing the plastic wheel cap AND the hub grease cap. There would be grease all over the rims and it would be blatently obvious where it came from.

The last picture of the controll arm shows the alignment shims. Adding or removing the shims is how the alignment is adjusted, so its not uncommon to see more shims on one side or the other.

You need to get a new trailing arm to replace the bent one. Can't say for sure, but a bent trailing arm could lead to differential problems if left unattended for some time.

[htchevyii]

I'm with Matt, looks like something off the road.

[racydave]

Besides being a foriegn substance, the only thing I can think of would be the seals at the inner wheel for the wheel bearings. That would probably leave grease on the inside of the wheels and tires.

[joelbert2k]

I get that crap on all my cars from time to time. It's real annoying.
Not sure what it is but it gets picked up by the tires and flung up on car.
If it were wheel bearing grease it would be all over the wheels. I don't think ball joint grease would hit the tires or get flung up onto the car like that, and besides there would be signs of dripping on the A arms.

Joel

[BartusCompater]

Alright, sounds like it was a false alarm. I'll still have to pinpoint those noises sometime in the future, but at least the car is driveable.

Once again, thank you all for the help. This is a fantastic community.

[pope]

Was a relative of Jackson Pollack seen near your car? Looks like one of his paintings! And you thought it was just road tar.

[So Cal Mark]

that bent trailing arm will cause the rear axle to be misaligned, so the car won't go down the road straight. They get bent from someone placing a floor jack under them

[BartusCompater]

I love discovering little surprises from previous owners like that!

[rlux4]

While you had the car up on jacks, did you test your ball joints and tie rods by holding the tire at top and bottom then on each side and wiggle it? I had a bad upper ball joint when I got my car and when I did this at top and bottom of the tire I not only felt it move, I could see the ball joint moving. I found it when I started hearing a clunking sound when cornering. Ball joint failure is major problems. Here's a picture I saw a while back of the results;



Ron