I am replacing the whole front end on my 2002 F350 including the inner axle seals. I have everything completely disassembled and I just started reassemble. Started with driver side balljoints.

Cleaned hub throughly before attempting to press new balljoints in. I am using the Icon ball joint press tool kit. The bottom ball joint will not press in enough for the snap ring they supplied. Upon further investigation, Apex made the snap ring groove taller and the snap ring is thicker than the OEM ball joints. I was very careful and ensuring I wasnt pressing the joint in crooked. I ran my impact a little bit, backed it off, re did my entire setup and then tightened some more multiple times just to ensure I didn't go in crooked and because this is a brand I am unfamiliar with.

I ended up damaging the body of the balljoint a little but slightly mushrooming where the pieces of the press tool press into the body to seat it into the knuckle. It's about 1/32" impression. looking over the other bottom ball joint it seems that groove was not machine downwards towards the end of the ball joint. They probably took the material going towards the opposite end, so it cant be exposed anymore. I cleaned up the old snap ring and tried putting it on because its slightly thinner and it worked immediately.

I am going to contact APEX on monday about this but I am expecting the bottom side to be the same and im going to see what kind of feedback they have for me when i tell them. I have not heard of anybody haing these yet and figured i would be the guinea pig and try it out and get a post going. They are atill developing the whole front end for 99-04 because all they have are the ball joints and 2 smaller outer tie rods, which i also bought.

Anyways, see attached pictures for where I currently ended for the day.

 

Another reason I 100% always reccomend oem Spicer ball joints. I wouldn't be worried with that damage though. Also don't see a issue using the old thinner snap ring if it's in good shape.

 

Yeah, that's typically the route I go. Rest of the front end is all OEM and the hubs and u joints as well. But I figured since Apex founder is previous owner of XRF and they were good until he sold them and I usually will consider upgraded parts when known. We shall see how this situation goes. It takes less than an hour to tear down and I dont daily drive the truck so who knows what will happen. May end up changing them out again later.

 

Got the Apex part numbers for those?

 

So another update this morning:

Upper ball joint won't even work at all. Compared the Apex top ball joint with the OEM top ball joint i removed and quite a bit of difference in the areas that can't be different. Snap ring groove is fully blocked when the shoulder is seated fully to the knuckle. I can't even see a sliver of it, which in the below picture that is obvious when you see that the groove sits much lower on the joint on the OEM one than the APEX one. this might have worked if the main body height was a little longer and the shoulder of the joint sat higher, but that isn't the case, also viewed in the picture below. The 2 red arrow reference linear dimensions are not even close to the same in person, and that is exactly the problem.

I don't recommend anybody buy anything from Apex for 99-04 at this time until they resolve this. I plan to call them tomorrow and share this with them and see what they have to say. 100% if you were making your ball joint based off of the OEM dimensions and wanted it to fit, not sure how this got by them. I know people have installed ball joints without installing the snap ring and have never had issues, but that is not something I will be doing.

Tried to get the best picture I could side by side and they aren't 100% exactly leveled together but close enough you can tell visually looking at it. I drew some arrows for reference to see the differences and to illustrate the issue on why the Top ball joint won't work at all.

 

Upper Ball Joint Apex P/N: BJ132
Lower Ball Joint Apex P/N: BJ139
I ordered P/N: KIT104 which is the upper and lower ball joints for both sides.

 

Wow. It is interesting that there is so much more material sticking out of the knuckle on the Apex than the original. I wonder if the ball inside is larger.

 

Yup. This thing would have worked too if they didn't have the snap ring groove up higher than the OEM one. It sticks out about 3/16" of an inch fully seated on the shoulder, which is also like 3X thicker and sits slightly lower down on the body than the OEM, which adds to the snap ring groove being inside the knuckle and unable to use.

 

So it appears I could possibly be good. Upper ball joints for Spicer has what looks like a snap ring groove, but doesn't utilize it for the upper. Same thing with other brands it seems. I also did not have snap rings on the upper ball joints i removed. So the issue is just the bottom ball joint not being able to press deep enough for the supplied snap ring.

 

Update: Job is complete and truck is put back together and aligned. Just wanted to update with some pictures and status in case it helps anybody else in the future. There are a lot of threads on this type of stuff but I have yet to see one that includes all of this. Some have most of it or just one of these. I used torque settings on everything re installing which are very easy to find. Worst part of this job was for sure finding out some of the part numbers I used to buy were actually the wrong parts, specifically the U Joints and Inner Axle seals. U Joints I got were driveshaft application, so I got the actual part numbers for the factory Spicer axle U Joints and then got those. Inner Axle Seals i bought off Riff Raff and come to find out, there are 2 different styles for the Dan 60. The ones Riff Raff sells are what is considered the "Updated" design, and the ones I installed are considered the "Original" design. There are Ford OEM part numbers for both. I also bought the special tool for seating them in exactly the right spot, but I bought the updated seals, and this tool won't work with them. So I bought different inner axle seals and then was able to use the tool. Attached is a picture of the inner axles seals installed plus the tool setup inside to see exactly how it is supposed to be used.

I had to use a different process for the ball joints because the same thing happened when I did it as last time with my last truck. I could not get the hubs to move very easily with one hand after following the required procedure (torque the bottom to a lower torque, torque the top to the full torque, then go back and do the bottom to the full torque, in that order). Since that did not work, I found a video online that mentioned the shims on the top ball joint that are often times stuck in the knuckle, you need to pull those out and clean them very well. So I did that, cleaned all rust and had them looking mostly new, and slid them back in. Made no difference. After all that, I just decided to tighten the bottom slightly, then tighten the top up, while i kept moving the hub side to side, then the bottom a little bit more, then torqued the top to the correct spec, then torqued the bottom. This seemed to work great. And I have no memory steering at all, and steering is much more responsive now than it was before. No idea if this is from using the Apex ball joints or not. My 2001 I did 5 years ago I used MOOG ball joints and had bad memory steering and just lived with it for the few years after until it got wrecked.

I already did the brakes right after I bought the truck, so they are about a year old now. Pads still looked new when I took them off. They are Hawks pads as they seem to have really solid reviews on our trucks. The rotors I can't remember what brand but they weren't cheap. I did not target them because they were drilled/slotted, but if I remember correctly, I didn't want to put some crappy parts store special brand on them and went with one that had substantially better reviews. Brakes work way better in this truck than they ever did in my 2001 with the same pads (but different rotors).

If you ever have any questions/feedback, let me know. I am semi active on this forum, but if I get an email notification I will see it.

 

Going off of your old thread you did end up getting the seal installer tool from TorqueKing correct? Was the seal tool good quality and if you needed would you purchase it again? I need to do the ones on my 02 and haven’t gotten around to it but I don’t want to purchase a tool that’s frustrating to use.

 

That is correct, I bought Torque King tool TS4807. This tool is specifically for the original style seals though, and I hope my thread here helps others in the future save some headache. I spent hours trying to figure out that the seals I bought were a new updated design and this tool won't work with the updated design Torque King has another tool that is considered a universal that doesn't set the seal to the exact depth that you must use on the updated design. My seals held up to 200K miles and over 20 years of driving, so I don't think not using the updated design is something I am missing out on. I plan to sell it most likely on here or ebay since it would be a hard sale locally and it was over $200 brand new, and I don't know the next time i will have to do this. It was easy to use and not difficult physically either.

 

That’s solid information about the seal changes and it mattering to the tool you have to use.

 

you went thru a lot of frustration, getting it all done right.

I am just happy that my XRF steering kit worked well.
I understand that the APEX company used to be XRF ??

 

The guy that fouded Apex started XRF and sold it several years back. He's now running Apex but with a different crowd in mind. His focus is now more off road...something along those lines