Ball Joints

Hello everyone,

I am new to this forum I have owned a tacoma for the past year and have been an owner of older toyotas, such as 2nd and 3rd gens. I have been a member at marlin crawler but seems like this is the place to be for tacomas. My taco needs new balls joints and wanted any advice that anyone has to make this as easy as possible. Thanks for looking!

Tyler

 

Uppers or lowers? The lower BJ change is relatively easy.

 

Lower ball joints are a pain in the butt to replace.

 

Have you done the uppers?

 

Don't need to since I have Burg upper arms.

 

Me too but to get the uniball on there meant getting the stock bjs out. Did you install yours?

All I was saying to the OP was the lowers are easier than the uppers.

 

Use the pitman arm puller. It works great. Just did my lower ball joints this past weekend.

 

Yeah, but I don't quite understand what you are talking about, Mike?

The uni-balls in the burg upper arm isn't that bad to press out.

I've never replaced stock upper ball joints, only lowers.

 

Replacing the stock uppers is not an easy job by any means. Its not like the uniball plug at all. I've not changed my upper uniball yet but I can see it would be a lot simpler to press out than the stock one. On a uniball setup, the part that the arm and ball slids over is a solid piece, doesn't flop around. It has a solid surface to press against.

 

Zerg fitting ball joints?

 

Lowers are MUCH easier than the uppers....IMO...

 

The camburg uni-balls are really easy to replace. All you have to do is take a rubber mallet and slowly tap the uni-ball in the cup.

 

I have an 03 and the lower balljoints are a recall item so i schedule a appointment for this morning and when i get there they don't have the damb parts. So you guys might want to go to toyotaowners and put in your vin number and see if your truck is under a recall still that is what i did , i didn't get a letter or anything???? I ,m going to let toyota do mine for free and the alinement.My frame isn't one of the recall frames thank god

 

Both are simple with the right tools. First are foremost, avoid the cheap aftermarket sector, Vatozone/oreily etc etc. get moog, or get toyota. you'll thank yourself later.


obviously jack vehicle up, stands, remove tires.

As for the top, you'll need a pickle fork to seperate the uca from the spindle, remove whats left of the boot, the snap ring, and pound the old one out with a bamf. the new one, freeze and grease to get it as little and slippery as possible, go to autozone, or harbor freight and get the ball joint tool to put the new one in. check the fsm and properly torque to spec.

The bottom is similar.

remove the bottom ball joint stud from the lca using pickle fork, then take off four bolts on bottom of spindle, now in reverse order, reassemble. USE LOCTITE. THIS IS A MUST. alot of vibrations will cause them to come out. trust me. Toyota says blue, i dont f around and use red. come off with more force. older (most) fsm's dictate 95ft/lbs for those four bolts, THIS WAS A MISPRINT, it actually was meant to say 59. so sixty. boom. then insert stud back through lca and torque.

USE NEW COTTER KEYS. dont reuse the old ones. Nows a great time to change those cv's IF your 4x4, and inner/outter tie rods if need be.

basic wrenchs, sockets will do, all metric, largest being 19 if i do remember correctly, rent the pickle fork and tool from autozone, or buy from harbor if your cheap. if not visit the local tool truck. get real locktite, trust me. mine failed. check my build thread. oops.

this will only take about an afternoon, not to hard really.

 

http://www.rockauto.com/
Moogs are quite affordable here

 

one thing to say about autozone ball joints...

When I did my uppers and my outer tie rod ends, I got them from autozone (duralast parts) and they were manufactured by "555" and made in Japan and after some research it appears the Japanese company 555 is the OE supplier for MOOG on many parts.

Moog wanted something like $60 a side for the outer tie rods...and the 555/autzone-duralast were like $25 dollars a side...some exact product..w/ a lifetime warranty

some product pictures on Moog's site even have 555 stampings visible on them

so food for thought...not everything autozone sucks

 

Agreed, cost me $63.46.

 

^ then why did the set of auto zone ball joints wear out after 10k and the moogs i finally put in are still in after 30k? Autozone is really not known for quality, especially rebuilds, had experience with that too. Maybe 555 makes lesser quality units for auto zone? Ive never heard anyone endorse auto zone parts before haha

 

I am sure that autozone uses a multitude of suppliers for their parts...so some may be good, some not so good.

I never endorsed autozone parts

I have had the 555 tie rods on my truck for a year...maybe 20k miles...and they are still tight.

 

After a few years of buying horrible parts I'm only buying like oil and spray paint from them and renting tools
Too many bad parts