Front Suspension Control Arm problems of the 2002 Lincoln LS

Steering loss due to ball joint and control arm failure for the second time. Parts were repaired. VIN not included in recall for same problem.

While driving my 2002 Lincoln Ls 3. 9v8 vehicle, I have been fighting my steering wheel to keep my car driving straight. I took the car to a local shop where I was told that ball joint bolt was lose, where he also pointed out the looseness. (bolt located behind the rotor right at the bottom of the control arm) today while driving, the steering took me into some grass but no damage was done to the vehicle. I have seen that this has been a problem in 2000 and 2001 so I wasn't sure if the same problem occurred in my 2002 but I feel very unsafe in the car especially commuting to work everyday on a busy freeway, fearful that the steering will give out at anytime and I would lose control of the vehicle.

Ball joint failure. My car was built in March of 2002 and they redesigned it in April to a larger ball joint which I learned by talking to a mechanic at the Lincoln dealer. He said that he fixes a lot of them built March and before but had never had to fix a post March 2002 car. I asked if he had ever upgraded it to the new design he said no, I asked if it was possible he said probably. I took the control arm off the car paid a machine shop $25 to machine it out from 14mm the old original size to 16mm the new redesigned size that Lincoln was putting in it after April and bought and installed a 16mm joint and that's all there was to it. All in all it only took a few hours (depending on the machine shop) and no special tools. If you have any mechanical ability you can do this job in your driveway, I did.