Ball joints. Those little things on the bottom of the front control arms that hold just about everything together up there! When they go, or are worn out the front end of the car gets very sloppy and in some states, you won’t pass inspection. The Porsche 911 uses one ball joint on each control arm. The top of the control arm is located with the strut tower. This makes the job relatively easy as you are only replacing two ball joints total.
You can test for ball joint play by jacking the car up, using a pipe or a crow-bar under the front tire, lever it up and down. There should be no movement. No “clacking” noise. Nice and solid. Of course, movement could also spell bad wheel bearings, but many times you’ll hear bad wheel bearings and bad ball joints won’t make a noise.
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