How do you check the ball joints? What to look for and what to listen for?

 

If you can take the weight off of your front end, you can usually pry around to check for movement. When it gets real bad, you apparently can hear them banging around.
I am going to need to do this soon myself, and am wondering who sells the best parts for a good price? Suggestions anyone?

 

Get the front end up with the tires off the ground and get a breaker bar and put under the tire and lift up, any up and down motion or loose play you ball joints are bad, this is what I did. FTEpartsguy Ed just hooked Dieselcamper(Jay) with some greasable Motorcrafts at a great price, check him out..

 

That too is what I did. Mike's reply is far more user friendly than mine! Thanks for the lead on Ed. I was going to check there for sure.

 

LOL, thanks Ryan. I went with the Moogs greasables but now there's Motorcrafts too, my pleasure...

 

Any warranties on those Mike?

 

i just replaced mine, make sure you have a FULL day to work on them if your going to do them, replacing them can be quite a PIA... i have the write up that i used in my book marks at home.(at work right now) when i get home ill post up the link if someone doesnt beat me to it...


to check for bad ball joints lift up the front grab the tire at the bottom and lift up if there is movment try watching the ball joints them selfs and look for movement.

as for a good ball joint checker has the Moog joints($72ish) then the cheaper brand is $22 and has a lifetime warranty +they have grease zerks on them i got the cheaper of the 2... both have lifetime waranty couldnt see spending more for a name band with the same warranty

 

Ford has a 12/12 warranty on all parts.

click on link below


Th!nkPartsGuy/FTEPartsGuy

 

There is, but I would PM Ed or Jay(Dieselcamper) to find out for sure how long a warranty, I just learned from those guys that Motorcraft has the greasables now, or if they did I didn't know about it.

 

Here's a writeup for the balljoints: Click Me

on edit: 3300 posts???

 

thats the link i was going to put up later on, i used it and all went well


impressive! way to go bud

 

I will get my truck up on jacks and check it tomorrow after work. Thanks for all the information.

 

I don't want to steal anything away from Ed, but I just placed an order yesterday for the joints and adjustable camber bushing from XRF Auto Parts for precision machined units that are also serviceable. I did a good bit of reading yesterday before deciding to not go back with Moog ball joints (which was installed on my passenger side last year).

The XRF units were very price competitive (something like $23-$24-ish each IIRC) and the adjustable camber bushing was $26-ish. Everything I read about them was good with no negative reports at all. While reading about their manufacturing process, I can say that I'm impressed because they use a harder cast steel unit than their competitors and then CNC precision-machine the joints to exact tolerances... all tolerance variances due to variations in the casting process are completely eliminated with this approach.

Here's the great thing about these units... they come with a 1,000,000 mile warranty... yes, that is 1 million miles!

Here's a link...Ball Joints, Tie Rod Ends, Idler/Pitman Arms | XRF Steering and Chassis Parts

 

Thanks for sharing Pete, can't beat that with a stick, nice find...

 

I also forgot to mention that I put 4 Moog's into the front end of my Excursion earlier this spring, so I should be able to make a decent comparison from memory once the new XRF's arrive - hopefully they'll get here on Friday, because I'd really like to handle them and see how they look in real life.