Has anyone replaced ball joints yet? Mine are starting to creak when going over something like a speed bump. Service manual looks pretty straight forward to replace the ball joint/control arm. I've been using a needle the past year to grease the OEM ones...but I think that race is about run.

The local part stores only sell craptastic Dorman units for $220. Rock auto has Raybestos on one side and Mevotech on the other for about $85 each...seems odd. Moog has finally come out with their set, but the only place I can find it is a site out of Iowa...NorthernAutoParts (Northern Auto Parts: - CONTROL ARM W/B by MOOG AUTOMOTIVE, INC). They have them for $60 each, which is about right for just a ball joint...but for the arm and joint...that's pretty low.

 

507-1845, 507-1846, right and left Raybestos/spicer. Used to sell them when I sold hard parts, before going to paint & such. Sold a lot of Moog, too. Moog is over priced. Good quality, but over priced.

Lowers are the load carrying and will wear faster than uppers. If I remember from my wrenching days, I never had to replace any uppers. Only on the Falcon/Mustang/Granada and such with the springs above the upper joint, making the uppers on them the load carrying.

Hope this helps.

 

Good info on the Raybestos. Would you happen to know if they are greasable? Would you recommend Raybestos for long term usage?

Last year I did the lowers on my ranger and the year before I had to do one upper. Since our Outie has struts, we only have a lower, which is held in place with a pinch bolt...super easy to take off (famous last words).

 

Spicer and Raybestos are owned by the same company, I forget what the parent company's name is. I can speak for the Spicer brand from experience, no experience for the Raybestos chassis parts. I'm assuming that they are the same.

I beleive that they are greasable, but that's a guess. The factory rep told me that all Spicer joints were greasable. He also said that non-greasable were better, longer wearing and the grease fitting is to satisify the long-held belief that greasable ae better.

How many miles on the OE non-greasable joints?

 

I've heard good things of Spicer products...in terms of hubs and u-joints.

We are just over 85k miles on the OEM joints...started hearing creaking around 70k-75k miles or so.

I called Moog's tech line and theirs are non-greasable. O'Reilly's had them for $60 each...which is amazing since their house brand (Master Pro) was $120! Only downside was that you have to pay first and then they order them in...if you return, you don't get shipping costs back.
Napa's brand are also non-greasable, but are not available yet...local store said that they are starting production on them...but not available. Interesting how he knew that.