My wives driver side Sway bar link is gone, well the top half that is. I found it because the tire was wearing funny and you could feel it through the steering wheel. The rest of the suspension seemed fine, there's no movement, squeaks or any sort of pulling etc. Is this enough to cause notably more wear on the tire?

thanks for any input.

 

When I bought my '97 it had the same problem (although the dealer respectfully declined to advise me of that) and the whole ride home I was trying to figure out why in the blue blazes it felt so "soft". In fact, the friend of mine that took me to pick it up and in turn followed me back home made the comment that it looked like it was trying to "dance" all over the place and asked me if I was fighting the wheel at all - which I wasn't.

Not corrected, yeah it will cause you tire wear and part wear issues - in my opinion only. I found out that it did a number on everything associated with the right front steering/suspension aside from the shock and coil. I had the control arms, ball joints, sway links, inner tie rod, etc., all replaced on that side.

 

Just the sway bar end link is bad? What year Explorer? I've been running my '92 with the swaybar completely removed for years with no abnormal wear, so I wouldn't expect a bad sway bar end link to cause abnormal wear.

 

He may have more issues than just the swaybar being out also. Basic alignment could be off, ball joints wearing and going bad, stuff like that. I do know that when my sway bar link wasn't there, it felt soft, but I had very little feedback through the wheel until other things started going. As he is having feedback in the wheel, it could be something else or a combination of things wrong.

 

I'm not assuming that there aren't other things, but i wondered how much effect it could have. its scheduled to go into the shop for an alignment afetr i fix the link.