curbed hard, excessive wheel play, bearings or ball joints?

[slownslurious]

curbed hard front pass. side. Wheel suffering some damage, no visible damage to strut, tension rod, tie rods, sway bars, or control arms. Everything except control arms is aftermarket anyway.Steering wheel is now shaking at highway speeds. Jacked it up and I'm getting excessive vertical play in the wheel, its either the ball joint (looks like original ball joints on this 200k car) or possible the hub/bearings (probably also original).Anyway what should I be looking for to know what to replace?
Modified by slownslurious at 4:15 PM 7/10/2005

[Pencil Shavings]

some wheel damage could also have thrown off tire/wheel balance. obviously thats not the vertical play problem, but it might not be helping either.

[dumbstroke8]

vertical play is the wheel bearing and horizontal play is the inner tie rod

[slownslurious]

tie rods are tein and brand new and straigh, and there is no horizontal play, so it must be the wheel bearings then. Anyone replaced theirs before? How much? also damn that means I'm going to need a really big socket.

[dumbstroke8]

if you want to check your ball joints and bushings, get some large channel locks and jack the car up. then squeeze each joint and bushings to make sure they are tight. but with the car jacked up, if you can shake the tire vertically, then you have a bad wheel bearing

[slownslurious]

the bearings are 40 each... if I'm doing it I might as well do both since the driver's one has a bit of play as well. Do I need to have them pressed into the hub?

[187_Ka-t]

Yes the balljoints need to be pressed in. Autozone rents a tool out to do the job. I just got threw changing my control arm and ball joint.

[xekushnr]

i'd check your alignment as well. after curbing your car its almost certainly off. excpecially if you hit it hard.