A few weird problems I'm having

Howdy all,
I used to frequent this site a lot a few years ago. Life happened and I moved on. But I still have the same truck, a 96 Taco plain-jane reg cab with a 2.4 4 banger and 5 speed manual. It now has well over 250,000 miles.

Anyway, the truck has been making 2 strange noises and I thought I'd run this by some of you to see if there were some ideas as to what might be happening.

Problem 1: Squeaking sound when a depress the clutch. Actually this has been going on for YEARS. I've had the truck for almost 17 years and back when I was young a dumb I used to simply squirt WD-40 into the rear of the transmission bell housing and somehow that would stop the squeak for awhile. I now realize how stupid that was because I could have ruined the clutch plate that way. Two years ago I changed the clutch, used white lithium grease on the throwout bearing fork pivot joint and it was fine for about a year. Now it squeaks every time I depress the clutch. I have no idea what is causing this.

Problem 2: Another weird noise. If I've been driving for awhile and slow down to stop or something there is a strange 'groaning' sound. Its hard to describe. Its as if something is rubbing somewhere. Its coming from the front and almost sounds like its one of the wheels. I've looked under there and don't see anything obvious. I will disclose that I did change out the calipers and also one of the wheel bearings last year. But when I jack the front wheels up and give them a spin everything turns smooth and quietly.

Neither of these bother me a lot but they aren't going away either so I figure I should look into them.

 

I think this is the link for the clutch squeak problem: http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/1st-gen-tacomas/159429-clutch-squeak-linear-spring-swap-tw-how.html

 

Interesting. So what does putting that new spring in there do? Remove some of the play in the pivot joint of the pedal? What if you just went up in there and squirted lubricant on the joint?

As far as the ball joints, yeah, I probably aught to have it inspected. They're original and the truck has been through a lot over the years off-road wise.

Thanks!