10/28/2003
There was a report on this mornings National News about an unusual high incidence of Upper Ball Joint failure in the Dodge Dakota and Durango vehicles.
Some of the falurse are complete, the ball joint coming apart, and occuring a soon as 30,000 miles.
I did not hear what years were involved.
If I had one of those vehicles or had installed a crossmember kit I would check it right now.

 

If they are talking about durangos as well as dakotas, I believe they are talking about newer vehicals. I know the models used for the swap for these IFS's are typically 87 to mid-90's. So I think anyone doing this swap should be ok, but it might not hurt to get an exact year range on what is having the failures to be sure.

 

I think Jon is probably correct. The fail rate at low mileage is very high on the Dakota from 97-99 or so. While doing the IFS summary research, complaints are all over the Dakota message boards from guys with failures at 30K or so. The owners say they are smaller than Volare ball-joints. That's pretty pathetic considering what the trucks cost.

Certainly warrants research but I think the models in question will turn out NOT to be the ones used for F100 IFS swap.

 

I was also concerned that some misguided members might have one as a daily driver as well.

 

yeah, I think it would certainly be something for anyone driving a newer truck to check into. I know with my driver though, which is an 88, has close to 250,000 miles on it and I think I still have the original ball joints.

 

There is a current investigation on 1998-2003 models. You can get more info here:

http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/

Search under this topic: PE03-032

Thats the action # for the investigation.