When i drive the car at low speeds the car rocks side to side very noticeably. I can tell because when i look at my mirrors it looks like im turning the steering wheel when its straight. I jacked up the rear wheels, no play in the wheels and nothing looked out of place. On my front right wheel, the tread on the inside of the tire is completely shot, its at the wire and the rest of the tire is basically brand new. I jacked up the wheel and there is a lot of play on the wheel, i locked the steering wheel up too and its still moving. I cant figure if its the wheel bearing or a bushing or the hub itself. Any thoughts, ideas, or tips?

 

How many miles on the car? Any suspension work performed in the history? Various possibililties: ball joint, tier rod end, upper or lower control arms. This video may be of some help:

 

has about 215k miles. I noticed that when shaking the wheel the upper control arm joint was moving when being shaked side to side. Going to check everything tomorrow and see if its just that

 

None of your suspension parts should move when checking the wheel for play. Also check wheel bearings.

After refreshing the suspension my front bearing wear accelerated and caused them to become unsafe at 198k in my 94.

 

That sounds serious. Some bushing , balljoint och bearing sounds in a bad state. Also a screw fixating some suspension part could be loose and by your description. I have exprienced that.
Some parts like lower balljoint failure can be extra dangerous. Little warning until wheel folds under car when the ball leaves the socket. On other car makes I have seen cars broken down in that way on the road on several occasions.

 

i highly suspect your have bad ball joints. there is 3 of them on each front wheel - upper, lower and tie rod! inspect them and replace in pairs.

also the strut rod bushings tend to wear out on these cars with high miles, so that is worth noting too.

 

when I went to move the wheel side to side I noticed that the upper camber arm seemed to move up with the movements

 

its pretty bad that whole wheel feels like its just going wherever it wants

 

okay, ill check it out in the morning if I have time to

 

i was able to get a good look at the car today, that bottom bushing is completely gone, it moves outwards so im going to replace both front ones and see how it rides

 

Glad you made some progress. For clarification are you referring to the lower ball joints? or lower control arm bushing?

 

lower control arm bushing is shot, i watched a youtube video of a guy that replaced his and my car does the same thing his does (which is the lower control arm moving outwards when i twist the wheel)

 

If the lower control arm bushing is bad I would seriously think about also changing the lower ball joint cuz with the bad bushing you're putting alot of pressure on the BJ. And they're already a "bad design".

 

The highest wear points on the front suspension are known to be the strut bar/rod bushings. Count on replacing the bushings or the entire assemblies at least every 75,000 miles. The original ones on my 2000 LS400 were completely shot by the time I had them replaced at around 83,000 miles. Replacing them took the car from driving extremely sloppy - especially in high winds - back to driving like new.

Here again is an old Australian article that mentions that they wear out quickly. It calls them "semi-longitudinal tension rods and bushes": https://www.autospeed.com/cms/a_3041/article

The strut rod bushings were the only front suspension parts that required replacement between when I bought my 2000 LS400 at 3 years/38,000 miles and when I sold it at 14 years/180,000 miles.

 

I had the passenger front lower control arm bushing on my 99 fall into pieces (at ~170k miles) when I removed the control arm itself from the subframe. Of course this was the reason I was in there in the first place - I had the same motion as OP described, along with a knocking sound when going up or down my driveway which could also be felt in the steering wheel...
Driver's side bushing was intact but noticeably worn out. I replaced the lower ball joints at the same time.

What Kansas says above is also very true. I am on my second replacement of strut rod bushings (as well as sway bar bushings, tie rods, steering rack bushings, engine & trans mounts, upper control arm bushings, and a driver's side front wheel bearing).

I'm willing to bet that your next most worn out suspension item will present itself shortly after replacing the lower control arm bushings