S197GT07

Moose is right on.

Direct swap and better looking ball joints

youngfalcon

Guys, thanks for the replies. I had the '05 GT inspected today for a MO license plate. The place I go is a great shop owned by locals. They are very thorough and found no problem with my ball joints or any of the front suspension so that is good news. I still notice a slight thumping sound from the front end when going over bumps slowly. Sounds something like a loose shock mount. Any ideas? Or is that a normal sound? I'm all ears when driving a car new to me. Thanks ahead for any further replies!

moosestang

The bushings in the stock arms are just really soft, that's great for preventing road noise and vibration, but not so great for performance and suspension movement/noise. All my suspension noise in the front was greatly reduced by swapping to gt500 arms. There's a tsb for a front end clunk related to the upper strut bearings.

Justinsmt88

If you have he money, go with the GT500 arms. I've had them for a few thousand miles and absolutely love em. They are a lot stronger than the factory arms and it improved my handling as well as ride quality. Honestly though my car had 160,000 when I put them on so I cant really speak for ride quality before because it was horrible. They are defiantly worth the money though.

Also regarding the strut mounts, they are complete garbage. I had front end clunk from hell and decide to by the j&m mounts and after putting them on car rides smooth and quite. Before that I had replaced everything arms, tire rod ends, sway bar links and struts and finally figured out it was the crappy mounts. When I took them off the damn things fell apart, total junk.

Derf00

Check the stabilizer link nuts on the strut. With the car off the ground and front wheel off, they shoudl be torqued to 89 ft/lbs. This is the only other potential source I can think of.

808muscle

I tightened every nut and bolt, replaced the strut mounts but could not get rid of that damn clunking sound, and yes it sounded just like a loose shock. when I installed the GT500 LCA's the noise was finally gone. Well spent cash IMO.

youngfalcon

Well after reading all the replies here and other posts regarding the noise, I am going to replace the upper strut mounts first. I will use the GT500 units. There is a TSB (07-18-2) regarding this. If it fixes the problem then I will have spent less $$ ($109) than replacing the LCA's. If that doesn't work I'm going to replace the ball joints on the existing arms. I will keep you posted on the results. It may take a few weeks to get the work done. Thanks for the discussion!

DTMR

bumpsteer kit does replace outer tie rod but not the inner tie rod. I just replaced my ball joints with the steeda ones and steeda bumpsteer kit and switches the bushings to poly ones. If you are going to do the job yourself it is alot easier to just get arms BUT I love the improvement I felt in my suspension with the steeda ball joint and the bushings but my car is also lowered.

hardcore302

I used the GT500 control arms, which are now the part number for regular GT's. The joint is 1mm bigger I think. I also have GT500 strut mounts.