I have a 00 EB EXP. Is there a way to tell which ball joint is bad (upper versus lower)? Is there a difinitive test to show that the upper is bad, or that the lower is bad?

 

How many miles are on it?
I know with mine i took it to the alignment shop and the jacked it up under the shock and grasped the side of the tires and went fore and aft with it and there was play which i believe that the idler arm was bad, and grasped it at the top and bottom did the same thing and it rocked which ment the ball joints were bad. Its gonna cost around 300 for 2 upper control arms(cant replace just the ball joints), 2 lower ball joints(can be pressed out) and a idler arm. Thats if you do it urself. Gonna be about ~7bills to have a shop replace it with an alignment.

 

The Exp had 178,000 miles on it, but I actually replaced the entire front suspension at about 110,000 miles (upper control arms, lower ball joints, pitman arn, idler arm, tie rod ends). I put in all Moog parts. Having said that, I got a recall notice from Moog shortly after installing them for the tie rod ends and had them replaced at the Firestone sevice center. I'm not exactly sure what brand of tire rods they put back in there. I assumed they were Moogs because Moog was paying the bill to have them replaced, but I'm not sure.

I am asking these questions because I have a REALLY BAD squeak coming from my front end. It squeaks when the truck goes up and down as apposed to when I turn the wheel (most of the posts on here talk of bad ball joints squeaking when the wheels are turned instead of when going over bumps so I'm not sure if my problem is really the ball joints). I have replaced the shocks thinking that it was a bad shock, I greased every busing in the front end, even to the point of taking the upper control arm off so that I make sure the grease made it to the entire bushing. My theory and the theory of the tech at the local service center after his inspection was that the squeak was coming from the upper control arm bushing, but greasing it made no difference. I keep coming back to the ball joints bacause there does appear to be some (just a little) play in the wheel from side to side when I test it. At this point I have done just about everything I can think of to try to get rid of this squeak but can't seem to find a resolution. Has anyone had any experience with anything like this? Any ideas as to what to try next would be greatly appreciated.

 

Sounds like it's the ball joints. I had the same problem with my 99 Ex.