Ball Joint Successes and failures

[jwintersteller]

I have the SMB 4X4 and as JoeH pointed, some have no problems and some eat them up. I know someone that has over 85K on the original ball joints. I however am not that luck. I had to replace the ball joints after the first 35K. Those went bad after 20K. So at 55K I put the Dynatrac ball joints in (did that in my driveway). That was in Dec. 2011. I now have over 113K on my van and have not had to rebuild them yet. I just checked them a few weeks ago and I still don't see any movement in them.
For my money, they are worth every penny!

John

[ShuttlePilot]

So I left Colorado Springs a week ago bound for San Diego and a lot of exploring knowing that the van steering wandered. The steering has wandered for the five years I've owned this van but by the time I got to Flagstaff, AZ it was basically underivable. I've known the ball joints are probably the culprit all along but just being a lame a$$ I just never dealt with it. 600 more horrible miles at 60 MPH later I landed at my friends who lives in the high desert. We jacked the van up and there was an unbelievable amount of slop at each tire. Like I'm not going to make it back to Colorado bad. So I changed the ball joints to the dynatrac rebuildable type over the last two days in his driveway. I also replaced the tie rod because it's always had a huge bend in it since the previous owner crashed the van. I've only done a short test drive up to 50 MPH this afternoon but oh my god what a difference having the wheels attached to the van makes.

I don't know what milage the old joints had on them but the van now has 90k and I've owned it for the last 30k. Could be original because even at 60k it wandered. IDK.

I enjoy working on equipment that moves and flies but for some reason I had to drive a thousand miles from home to replace the ball joints. It’s added to a great adventure trip and I’m feeling much better about making it home, eventually.

Thank you to everyone who has posted.
-Eric

[Jsweezy]

Just purchased my van that was needing new ball joints in a bad way. This van has 113k miles with an advanced conversion and they have never been swapped from the original non serviceable ones. Scary to drive to say the least.

Now that the new ones are in this van is actually fun to drive and I'm looking forward to the road trips ahead.

[TomsBeast]

I'm wondering if the Dana 60 front axle with 'new and improved ball joints' was really an improvement over the old Dana kingpin design?

I've never worked on one, but I see the aftermarket has solutions for wearing out (plastic?) king pin bushings, with bronze replacements

[carringb]

King pins wore out too. Ball joints are more "alignable". The pre-'05 Ford/Dana-60 ball joints were too small IMO. '05+ seem to last pretty well.

[TomsBeast]

The Dana 60 'unit wheel bearings' and undersized stub axle roller bearing in my 2001 front axle leaves a lot to be desired as well...

[Yeahbud]

Just order a set of Dynatrac HD balljoints. Not sure how many miles are on the ones in there now, but after 4 weeks of baja in august, they are prettttty sloppy.

Will report back with how things go on install!

[Annie O]

Originally Posted by Yeahbud

...after 4 weeks of baja in august...

Sounds like a tough job but SOMEBODYS got to do it! good luck on the install

[MadScience]

Originally Posted by ShuttlePilot

oh my god what a difference having the wheels attached to the van makes.

I felt the same way about both ends of shock absorbers.

It seems like it would be hard to over-state the obvious, but it's surprisingly possible to ignore massive glaring problems for far longer than is, in hindsight, safe or reasonable.