Thanks to the excellent procedure from Racerguy and tips from many other good members I replaced all four ball joints on my 03 F-250 4WD. Got the ball joint kit from the powerstokeshop- great buy for the money. Ball joints were Moogs and all of the seals were Ford. These ball joints are marked made in USA. I know some members noted that Moogs are made overseas now and maybe they are but the ones I just bought claim to be made stateside. The seal driver made from pipe fittings worked great. I machined mine to 3.8" OD and skimmed cut the face to true in up. I also rented (Borrowed) the ball joint press from Advanced Auto. I looked at the kit from Autozone and there really is no comparison the Advanced Auto kit is much better equipped. It was still a big job. Lots of rust and very tight nuts to overcome. Thanks again for all the help!!

 

Congrats.... to both of us! I just finished mine last weekend too! Did the same thing as you except I didn't buy the kit from powerstrokeshop because they quoted some crazy high $$ shipping when I tried to order. Just curious, what did you pay for shipping for their kit?

It was definitely a big job but all in all mine went smooth.

 

Great job, guys. Money saved, is money earned.

The first time I did these ball joints, Advance Auto also had the small balljoint press kit that AutoZone had, and I had to improvise with large sockets, etc. Its great that Advance now lends the true "universal" press kit.

 

Congratulations fellas, those can be a pia sometimes, like mine were.......

 

Congrats!! I just finished mine as well last Friday. Thanks to the the great posts on this site, the job was fairly easy. My only problem was removing the rotors. I did come up with a trick that I will share. I pounded forever and added a lot of lubricant but the rotors would not come out. Finally, I removed the ESOF hubs and put a piece of 1" solid square stock against the hub and used a gear puller on the rotors. The screw on the gear puller tightened against the square stock and I ran it down with my impact gun. It took a lot of force, but the rotors finally broke loose. When they did come loose, it was an awful sound. This was much better then pounding with a hammer.

 

WOW! Must be ball joint season! I just had mine done about a month ago. PITA! But ssssoooooo nice now that they are done.

 

I did mine 2 weeks ago as well. Good bit of work for an old man (65), but no problems except creaky joints....mine..not the truck.

 

The sad part for me is I still have a clunk noise under the truck. I just ordered bushings for the sta bar and sta bar links from energy suspension. I hope that takes care of it. My tied rod ends don't seem to move either, I wonder if they are frozen up. If so, this may explain why the truck sometimes wanders. I checked, tie rod ends are expensive!!

 

Hey 1975StroppeBaja I paid $317 and change for everything with shipping and that included that hub o-ring kit that is not normally in the ball joint kit but i purchased that as well. the powerstroke shop is in indiana and i'm in pennsylvania so fairly close maybe that saved on shipping a little. I know a local auto parts store wanted right about $300 with our 6% state sales tax for the four moog ball joints and another forum member said ford dealers are getting well over $100 for the seals and o-rings so for me the powerstrokeshop won easily.

Another thing, the first evening i worked on the truck for about 3 hours crawling around on my blacktop driveway. The next day I used a piece of old carpet padding which made a huge difference on the knees and such. I'm 43 y/o.

 

That's pretty good. I paid $153 for the ball joints from Amazon (free shipping) and I had a grand total of $154 from Ed for seals, o-rings, needle bearings, etc. Its odd though, I'm in WV and powerstrokeshop wanted $43 for shipping which put them outta the game for me. The ball joints and seals aren't that big/heavy so I'm not sure what happened there.

I also had $80 in front axle u-joints from Jeff's Bronco Graveyard and about $400 in front brakes.

All in all a fairly spendy job but hopefully it'll last for at least another 75k.

 

I put together a ball joint kit with OEM grease-able ball joints, and all the seals.

check the link below.

Th!nkPartsGuy/FTEPartsGuy

 

Nice kit-nice price FTE/PARTS-GUY. Buying a kit like that is the only way to go IMO. I saved your site as a favorite.

The Moog ball joints also come complete with nuts, snap rings, cotter pins and straight zerks for the lowers and 90 deg zerks for the uppers. As packed in the box though the uppers had a plug in the grease fitting hole. I installed the 90 deg zerk in one side and when I rotated the axle by hand the u-joint hit the zerk so I had to take it back out and re-install the plug after greasing it real good (did this on both sides). Guess I'll only be greasing the uppers when I rotate the tires

 

That's a nice kit Ed! If it had been available a month ago I would have seriously considered those greaseable OEM's.

Well, a few folks asked me about doing a writeup for the ball joints and all the other things I did, so here it is for those waiting for it... probably needs a few tweaks here and there but its close...

2004 F250 Ball Joint Replacement

There are links on this page to the caliper pins, needle bearings, hub service, and front axle u-joints.

I don't want to step on Racerguy's or Guzzle's toes with these writeups as they have the processes covered really well. My articles just have a few extra pics and describe how I did a few things a little differently.

 

That was an excellant write up! I don't think Guzzle or Racerguy would mind, they probly welcome it.

 

I replaced mine last year but I had more money then and it was $425 total for 2 bottoms. The bad part is that they left 2 nuts off the right hub (of the 4). I discovered it a year later after much off-roading.