Just had new ball joints put in on my 2000 F-350 Super Duty 4x4. I got the truck used and it looked like it had been taken care of. I went for a front end alignment and the tech said the ball joints were bad. I grabbed the tire and sure as *&@# there was about 1/4 " of play. I got the local ford dealer who I purchased the vehicle from to replace them for free. The ford service guy and I both share the same opinion, non-greaseable ball joints are crap. But guess what ford replaced the crap with.....You guessed it, the same type of ball joints. My truck has 50,000 miles on it, anyone had to get their ball joints replaced this early?

 

Changing ball joints on the SDs seems to be a common problem. I did all 4 ball joints and both hubs at 60K (01 F350 Std Cab). I did replaced mine with greasable ball joints. There are people on FTE that have posted having to changed ball joints as low as 15K.

 

Wow, that's really terrible those ball joints aren't lasting very long. I wish my '92 would have had the kingpin Dana 60 instead of the balljoints ('92 was first year for ball joints), but so far I haven't had any problems with them...

 

92 the first year for ball joints? My 1990 f-150 has ball joints!

 

You have the dana44, SoCal is talking about his dana60.

 

had mine done @ 27,000 miles!

 

Yep, what Brokebronco said... .

 

From what I have heard and read, balljoints can go as early as 20K or as long as 100K depending on how you drive across RR tracks, offroad, etc. I was going to have to put new balljoints on my 99.5 at 50K since they were starting to get "sticky" in the steering. Figured I would drill and tap the lower ones for zerk fittings to get grease in them to see if that would help and it did the trick. Don't know why the uppers weren't having the problem but if I can avoid there replacement for a few more thousand miles I'll be happy. Also, I had heard that Ford has started to supply replacement balljoints with grease fittings but when I asked about that the Ford parts guy said that all he had were the non-greasable ones. NAPA sells a good Moog replacement set of greasable ball joints for about $100 total for both upper and lower per side.

John