I recently bought a 2001 F150 XL 4.2L and naturally it came with some problems. I resealed the intake manifold and fixed the cooling leak and it is running pretty good now. After replacing the brake fluid that looked like coca cola I trust the brakes are good now. I also did the oil and power steering fluid. Transmission fluid will come soon. The shifter bushing on the column was bad and the OD switch broken off so I replaced them and the blown OD fuse.

While I was under there I noticed the sway bar end links were disintegrated so I replaced them and went ahead and checked the ball joints. Sure enough the ball joints are shot too. And of course the tie rod ends don't look that great either. So I went and ordered up a bunch of moog parts for replacements.

Now this is an old beater truck and I don't want to go overboard, but if I'm going deep enough to change the ball joints I should probably do the lower control arm bushings too. So I noticed that moog has the whole control arms with bushings and ball joints for like $62 each on amazon. But the ball joints don't have grease fittings. Should this concern me? The factory ball joints do not have grease fittings and lasted over 100k miles and moog parts are supposed to be better than stock so are these ball joints good enough or am I looking for trouble? If I do the whole lower control arm as an assembly it will save me a lot of time and hassle so it seems like a good deal.

Here is what I have on order - Is this all I need?
Upper control arms lower control arms with ball joint, bushings shocks
spring isolator (actually 1" urethane leveling spacer) inner and outer tie rod ends.

Can I skip the idler arm - it has a grease fitting so I assume it is ok. How do you tell if its bad?

 

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All the parts arrived. The ball joints in the lower control arms do not have grease fitting. A little googling tells me these r-series parts are just oem quality which is fine for the bushings, but I don't want to be changing the ball joints again anytime soon. I toyed with the idea of drilling and tapping for grease fittings, but in the end it is better to go with the upgraded moog lower ball joints that already have fittings and better bearings.

I ordered lower ball joints before the control arms and was going to return them. Now I think I will just ditch the cheaper ball joints that came in the LCA and install the better ones.

I also ordered an Ingalls Engineering cam bolt kit because it is fairly inexpensive to install while it is all apart instead of waiting for the alignment shop to tell me I need it later.

$32 for both sides at amazon:
The Ingalls kit looks heavier than the moog and costs less.

I'm hoping that I can do this all once and never have to touch it again.