Thanks Joel. what you are saying makes sense and I am going to go with it. The only thing that is actually bad is the ball joint boots, but I figure rather than replace the boots, go ahead and do the joints instead. The car only has 54,000 mike on it, gyes time is what got to the boots.

I had the same issue with he ball joint boots myself, at around 40,000 miles. I replaced just the boots, used the Prothane ones. They are far from original equipment, they also do not seal in the grease nearly as well as the rubber ones that come new from the factory. I have been searching for OEM ones for a number of years now, but cannot find them anywhere. Both the upper and lower joints came apart pretty easily for me, I thing the original parts from the factory are stainless steel, I didn't have any corrosion at all between the ball joint studs and the A arms. Does anyone have a source for the OEM boots?