does an unloaded balljoint need to be replaced?, want to disprove my friends pseudo logic Options

[enderswift]

hey everyone

heres the context,

I took apart my drivers side wheel to remove a dust ring that was making alot of noise. While i was taking things apart, i had to seperate the lower balljoint from the lower control arm in order to slide the cv from the hub. My buddy says that once a ball joint has been unloaded, like mine, it has to be replaced. I completely ignored this, put things together, and went about my life for a few weeks.... until my car started to make a sound every time i would accelerate a little more agressively. It almost sounds like somethings is loose... i cant explain it through a post so im not going to try. Has anyone ever heard of this whole balljoint thing??

[enderswift]

thanks for the replies everybody

to answer some questions:

I seperated the ball joint from the control arm by removing the three bolts that hold it together. no separator fork was involved.

When i had things apart i made sure to inspect all the parts and the balljoint looked like new, which impressed me considering its going on 10 years and 75K!

808, I did exactly as you said. Put things together with a torque wrench (at least for the parts that my manual had torque specs for) drove it for a few days then tightened everything down again.

I guess that rules out the ball joint..

any ideas? as far as i can tell everything looks great. This sound only comes when im accelerating from a dead stop a bit more briskly. It seems as though the weight transfer from front to back is unloading something and letting it make a very shurt clunk/stutter sound (think several rapid soft clunk sounds).

all input is really appreciated! id like to get this resolved before it gets REALLY cold around here O.O

This post has been edited by enderswift: Oct 1, 2009 - 11:43 AM