Howdy, For maybe the last 20k miles, my Jetta ('97 TDI 5 sp manual, 180k miles) has made a little more jiggling noise when the left tire hits a bump than the right. For the last few months, I have noticed a quiet ticking clicking sound when taking off in 1st gear. I have no objections to a few noises coming from a car this age, and I'm not all paranoid about safety, but I also don't want a wheel to fly off on the way to work.
A mechanic sorting out a few other things told me these are symptoms of a dying lower control arm ball joint, and it is $177 to fix. He also called it 'dangerous', but other advice from this source would indicate he would use the same adjective for wiper blades that are streaking a little.
Here is my question - will my wheel fall off if I wait for this to fail? It seems like the wheel will steer kind of sloppy but should be ok in a 'limp home' mode kind of way.
Another factor - I plan on selling this car in a year, when it hits 10 years or 200k miles, so if it drives and acts like it does now for 20k more miles, I will be happy.