2+2 severe inner tire wear, rides hard, wheels hop, swerves & drifts
Ok, I bought this really good running stock 96 N/A 2+2 for a good price knowing this would be a $1500 or more piece of the repair action for it. I've got these issues (NOTE: has 184,000 miles on the chassis and I'm assuming none of the suspension parts have ever been replaced from the looks of them and how it drives)
1. Severe inner tire wear on ALL tires. Not sure if front is source of problem because I'm not sure if tires were swapped front to back by previous owner due to wear issue. When I got the car the right rear tire was so bad the steel bands were starting to show in 2 or 3 spots--and it lost air fast due to seepage thru the radials. All other tires were pretty equally worn on the inside edge (first 2 inches from sidewall).
2. Pulls/drifts to left when driving over 20mph (DOES NOT get worse with braking, so I concluded not a bad brake caliper, etc). Does not get worse as I gain speed--stays pretty consistant.
3. Really hard/ride--like I'm riding in a go-cart.
4. When hitting bumps of any size it swerves or grabs in either direction as if the wheels just woke up from a nap. Kinda feels like the wheels come out of a hydroplane on crack rock....
Took it to a shop to see what they said about the issues--specifically the inner tire wear. Manager told me it couldn't be aligned until the tie-rods were replaced due to worn-out. He shook the tires and showed me the play in each front tire. He also said the struts looked old/worn out and could be contributing to the ride issue and also the springs.
He didn't mention bushings (front or rear), frame mounts, or anything on the rear.
I don't plan on racing or tracking it so I know even though I could put a sway bar on their I really don't think I'll get much use out of it. So unless there are other benefits I'm not seeing with it I'd rather not go there.
1. What are all the parts that could be, and mostly likely are contributing to my problems?
2. What economic parts would you use and from where? The shop said they'd use my specialty parts if I wanted to bring them in but I don't know what parts to pick and if extra hardware would be needed specific to those parts. I don't want to go overboard with cost but I want it done good at the same time.
What I really want to avoid is paying someone a lot of labor costs to do just half the job and when something else could be have been replaced to make the ride better while the suspension was apart.
thanks!
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