UPDATE...

I did the ball joints this weekend, and what I found was absolutely amazing. The passenger side upper joint (Moog) had at least twice as much slop in it as compared to the driver side upper (XRF). To boot, the XRF's even had 20,000 more miles on it than the Moogs. In all honesty, I suspect that part of the accelerated wear on the passenger side Moog was the poor condition of the passenger side end link (had enough wear to cause one end of the lower bolt sleeve to be flared into an oval shape).

All in all, my conclusion at this point is that the "premature" wear on all of my ball joints has to be related to the worn condition of the end links (and perhaps tie-rods as well). With all those units replaced (and new wheel bearings were installed back in the early spring of this year), I can feel absolutely no movement or shifting in the steering and handling of the truck at all, even on rough road sections. Silky smooth and feels like a brand new vehicle... even my passengers have noticed the significant improvement while just riding with me, and that is even before completing the alignment, getting the front tires replaced, and replacing the sway bar bushings!

 

I gotta ask, do you do anything offroad? How come you have gone through so many ball joints? Are you sure there isn't anything else going on? How are your tires surviving?

Reason I ask was I pulled my stock ball joints out at 135,000 miles and that was after running 37's for 55,000 miles and 35" tires for 30,000 miles and stock tires up till then...

Only reason I took them out was 40" tires were going on along with a different steering knuckle.

 

I read a number of ball joint replacement guides in this forum. They all say to mark the upper ball joint sleeves to preserve the original setting. The sleeves in my '93 E150 have an indexing tab, the one with a notch for the retention bolt, that as far as I can see means the sleeve can only go in one way. There is a small amount of play about the ball joint axis because the slot is slightly wider than the tab but I don't see wrench flats on the rim of the sleeve. How can the sleeves be installed in another orientation?

Sixto
'93 E150 Chateau 5.8 185K miles

 

2WD truck = NO offroading whatsoever. Roughly 80% highway or long county road runs and 20% city driving.

The ball joint changes have not been exceptionally fast, in my opinion, aside from the Moogs. I have 230K miles in the truck right now. The oOriginal ball joints were changed on Passenger side at about 160K miles and about 165K miles on Driver side. The new passenger side joints installed at 160K miles were Moogs, and they only lasted 20K miles before being replaced with another set of warrantied Moogs. The XRF's I installed on the Driver side at 165K miles lasted 70K miles. Like I said, I expect that the wear in my tie-rods and end links contributed to the shorter than "original" ball joint life.

One other potentially contributing factor might be the 2" leveling kit I installed at 160K miles, but since it was only a set of spring spacers, I don't see how they would have made much difference aside from limiting the vertical shock travel distance. Still, since I do not spend any real time on roads rough enough to require full shock travel, I just don't see a connection there.

 

Have been reading a bunch of threads on the XRF BJ's and was wondering if you could give current mileage and satisfaction w/ product?

 

I've got 155k on my XRF's, but my truck has never been hard on ball joints.

 

I only have 12k on mine and so far so good.

 

I have about 70K on my XRF kit. I did the complete kit. Ball joints, tie rod and ends. and the drag link, so far im happy. i drive 75% highway and about 25% off road. 10% dirt and 15% sand at pismo beach

mine is a 4X4..

Here is a link to the tire club http://www.thetireclub.com/content.w...RUCK_KITS.HTML they offer the best price on the xrf kits. EDIT.. Looks like everything has gone up about $50 since i did mine almost two years ago

 

Time for an update!

 

I now have 20k on mine and have no issues at all. That reminds me I have to grease mine again.

 

I have around 17k on my XRFs and so far so good

 

246,137 and still going strong!

 

About 90K on the XRF and all is Good...

 

I discovered why I went through a set of XRF's in a year, and it was because the head of the pinch bolt on my c-frame member was so large that it was pushing against the knuckle housing which holds the upper ball joint on every right hand turn due to lack of clearance. The knuckle assembly would hit the bolt head and get physically pushed aside causing excess physical wear with a sideways force. I actually ended up wearing a groove in each knuckle assembly (under where the caliper bracket attaches) on both sides of the truck.

The solution was to install the new joints and new pinch bolt, and then grind one face of the hex bolt at a 45° angle to create the required clearances. Although I was beginning to despair with my early need to replace these BJ's, it is now clear that it was not design fault of the joints, but rather an installation issue due to the geometry on my knuckles and c-frames.

Bottom line... I will still continue to purchase XRF's.

 

Glad you found your problem..