check your ball joints

Another one bites the dust. Seen this little Taco down the street from my house.

 

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I talked to a tow truck driver few weeks ago. He said he gets old tacos with broken ball joints or tie rods almost daily.

 

The 555 sankei were inspected after 10k miles on the 4runner forum and the ball had major scarring. This will wear the joint till it fails.

The 555s are pretty pricey also. Might as well go OEM.

When my joint failed it took out UBJ, tie rods, steering rack, cv, tire and brake line.

 

You guys are scaring me. My 95 taco has 318k miles on the original frond end. I have not noticed any unusual knocking, vibration or any kind of noise abut I bought the whole OEM set for the front end anyway (UBJ, LBJ and outer tie rod - left and right) on trdparts.com. No tax, free shipping and total cost was $373.58 (one LBJ was $105.82 - For that price I wouldn't even look for not OEM). With LBS all bolts, nut and pin were included.

Anyway now I need few ours of spare time to do the swap.

 

Mildly related. I had my mustang into ford to fix a broken exhaust stud a couple years ago. They had to drop the suspension parts, lift the engine etc to get to it. Anyways there's an important step in replacing balljoints, and that is to put the cotterpins back through the castle nuts. They're there for a reason. Cruising at 60 and having the passenger wheel completely disconnect from the steering is interesting to say the least. It felt like I was running over bowling balls but managed to get it off the road without killing myself.

After the tow truck showed up and I could see underneath it was pretty obvious what had *not* been done. The drivers side was 1 thread away from dropping out as well and then I'd really have been up the creek. 50 cents in parts make a world of difference.

 

FWIW, so far I've got about 60k or so on my MOOG BJ's (upper and lowers- from rockauto.com) and they're holding up just fine. They were something like $40 a piece and I did the work like 5 or 6 years ago. Still perfectly fine.

 

Almost 40k on mine 555s.

 

Have you checked them?

 

Ball joint failures suck!! Especially when you examine one for someone "uncle" and tell them they need to change it out due to creaking/popping with wheel rotation. He drove it the next day and it failed in a parking lot. "Not sure if it was aftermarket or factory.

 

Yes ...quite often. No problem so far

 

Ugh, did this replacement recently, actually a very easy job but man would it suck to have to fix the aftermath of a breakage. What with the steering rack and related accessories being almost assuredly destroyed in the process and the upper balljoint possibly letting go as well. Much more annoying if it took out a nice aftermarket upper uniball.

For a job that only needs to be done every 80-100K might as well go the OEM route. My MOOG and Chinese (both actually Chinese but one was unbranded) LBJs wore out within 1.5 years. One had 1/8in of play and the other was so gritty I figured I'd just man up and replace both with quality this time. I suppose learning the hard way is an intrinsic flaw of our species haha.

 

I checked my VIN against the list of VINs affected and it is on the list. The dealer and the web check say no open recalls, how do I KNOW or where can I find out that it was done.

 

If your VIN is part of the recall and Toyota shows no open recalls, then it is very likely that a stealership has already done them. They should have record of this though in their database.

 

OEM inner tie rods alone cost more than that. Not even close to a true statement if youre talking about toyota parts

 

ya, if you buy at the dealer but you can buy oem brand replacement parts for les then half of what the dealer wants and its the same part made by the same company but its just not in that pretty red Toyota box or has the Toyota sticker on it.

you can go to the auto store and buy good quality aftermarket parts and get upper ball joints for $12-$15 each, lower ball joints for $25-$35 each, outer tie rods for $15 each (never saw the price on the inner tie rods but was told they were on average $25 each)

I replaced both upper and both lower ball joints and both outer tie rods on my 99 taco and it was under $150 for all of it after taxes

 

Pleas share this magical 150$ deal for OEM toyota "whole front end", 100% will buy

 

I haven't read more than 1/2 of the 1st page, but for reference, my '96 access cab had 290,000+ before an upper ball joint broke on me. All of them were original up to that point.

 

There NOT made to OEM specs.

 

For me there is no such thing as OEM replacement. It is either Toyota or aftermarket. What is aftermarket is not the same as Toyota and the difference is not just the shiny box but design or materials or quality or any combination. For my understanding aftermarket replacement is the part that just fits in to place where original part is and performs the same function only. The design and materials used is just aftermarket manufacturer's imagination. Quality and durability can always be unknown factor.

It has been shown by many times that Toyota LBJ is more durable than cheaper aftermarket replacement. The cost as of two weeks ago for the whole Toyota set (excluding inner tie rods) is about 375 dollars (6 pieces total) at the online store which is about 25% of the dealer walk in price.

If this is a bumper grill or corner lamp I would save money and buy few times cheaper aftermarket replacement but for critical parts as suspension I wouldn't trust anybody but Toyota.

I'm doing the oil change and tire rotation the following week at local (Polish) Toyota dealer at the same time asking about full inspection of my front end. Just to have second opinion. So far they checked to be quite good in what they do and not that expensive (unlike my dealers in USA I used).

 

I need to do mine. Threads like this scare the crap out of me. They also can get overwhelming as to what to go with and not to go with. I know many will suggest OEM, and some say some aftermarket is good as well. So, with that being said, I am going to ask about these. Not just for me, but for others that are doing research on lower ball joints. Thanks in advance!

Are the ones sold by Low Range crap, okay, good, whatever?
http://www.lowrangeoffroad.com/1995-5-2004-toyota-tacoma-4x4-lower-ball-joints-made-in-japan.html