I was driving along at night today and realized that every time a car passes the lights make it hard for me to keep a straight line. It's not because I'm a bad driver, it's because my car demands so much attention to keep in a straight line. My dilema is that I know it needs a front end rebuild, rubbers is wearing out and the grease joint's are slowly dying. I'm also almost fully sure it needs a front end reallingment. My car is my daily driver though, and I hate having to putting it down to do a front end rebuild, and I hate the idea of having someone else doing because I don't trust other's work(despite me not really knowing anything about doing a front end rebuild). I obviousely will not do the front allignment until I do the rebuild.... but I don't know what to do, all I know is that the rebuild will be expensive(either doing it myself or having someone else do it), and I hate mechanics, but I also don't have the time to rip my front end apart when I have to get to the college, unless I wait till the summer.... Has anyone else done a rebuild and can they describe it's difficulty, during the summer I could probably give up 1 week at least(probably more if I had to), during the winter I could give up about a day.

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My car may be slow to sixty, but at least it's been reliably slow to sixty for more than thirty years.

First, while driving at night I keep my eye on the shoulder stripe in the road, never stare at the oncoming car's headlights or youll be blinded after it passes. Also, Ive owned several vehicles that seemed to drive like you were balancing a knife edge while at highway speeds; installing shocks and struts always corrected the floating and constant steering compensation. That's the first thing I would replace, of course do all your basics first like tire inflation and treadwear analysis. Then take it to an alignment shop and see what they come up with. For $40 CDN you can get the front end aligned, and as part of the service theyll check your susp. components to see if the car actually can be aligned. If they tell you they cant align your car and give you a list of worn parts to explain why they can't, big deal forty bucks to tell you what you need to replace and what you don't.

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I've been calling it as i see it for my entire life and that's not about to change. Take it or leave it.

I keep my eyes on the middle line, I try not to keep my eye in the headlight area. Right now the shoulders are covered by snow so I have to balance looking at places. Then, I have to belittle my age, I'm close to turning eighteen and have only had my liscense for two years(including my learners permit), so I'm not as veterans to night drivering.

Now, to the actual problem. I've replaced the shocks but haven't replaced the struts, and the shocks I did use as replacement are bottom rung. It's probably be a good idea to replace those even if they aren't the problem. Thanks for the ideas, shocks I can luckily replace for in about an hour if I did front and back, I've never replaced struts but they don't look particularily hard. Which do you think would be best to do first though, shock and strut replacement or the analysis, currently I'd really only have funds to about $100 worth of work.

Oh yeah, treadwear is good, I currently have two year old snow tires that have been used for a total of around 5 months, they have a lot of studs missing but the tread itself looks brand new, my summer tires might be able to tell me more since they've been used during hot weather and without ice around to keep the tread from wearing off.

hmm, sorry for not signing in, as I'm guessing anyone reading this would have figured the guest is me.

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My car may be slow to sixty, but at least it's been reliably slow to sixty for more than thirty years.

Your car wouldnt have struts on it. Struts comprise the shock and spring as an assembly.

If you haven't done so, throw a new pair of front shocks on it, and if there still isnt an improvement, take er in and get the alignment shop to look. That should fall within your budget. I think your rears will be ok for awhile, I wouldnt worry about them.

If you see any funny wear on your summer tires be sure and let them and us know. Of course you can do some simple checks yourself such as steering play, jacking up the front end and wiggling the wheels back and forth to check for slop etc. But if you have to replace anything the car will have to be aligned anyway...

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I've been calling it as i see it for my entire life and that's not about to change. Take it or leave it.

The tread wear his very good on the smmer tires, the only spot that looks like it is slighty more worn is on the side of the tire edge on one of the back tires and may be attributed to parking against the curb since I have a tendancy to do that, the tires are on the wheels with no slops or anything, I know since I've changed the brakes on the rear and checked the brakes on the front, and the tires once the nuts were tightened didn't move at all. The springs fairly likely and I will replace them at the end of the month. I was also thinking that I might just be getting nervous on the roads since many of the roads have been cut down to half their size by the snow, either way if I can get my car to keep straight I'll be much happier. I'll probably update on the reallignment in a month or two assuming that after I replace the shocks I still feel I need it.

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My car may be slow to sixty, but at least it's been reliably slow to sixty for more than thirty years.