What have you done to your Tacoma today? 1st Gen Edition

at least you caught it before it totally failed and took out your fender/cv axle.

 

And brake line..

And steering rack..

And rim..

And...

 

Yup. I noticed some kind of fluid on the inside of my tire and was all "wtf??" I think I even heard it pop earlier when driving. The grease leaking out is still Vasoline clear looking so it just happened. My wife is going insane with all the car repairs I am into these days. She will love hearing about this .

Moog?

 

OEM. All the way. Don't cheap out. Only 20 bucks more per side.

 

Good source? Other than the stealership?

 

Costs much more than $20 extra per side for OEM over Moog. I've never had problems with Moog ball joints...

 

Seems like it. One Toyota on-line store is listing it for $92 whereas Moog is $47

 

$38.79 each on Rockauto for Moog LBJ's which is where I got mine.

 

Camelback Toyota has the best prices

I paid a lot for my moogs. But I live in wy which doesn't help. They were almost 80 bucks each. OEM where 90. Figured most people can get moogs for 60-70

OEM will just last longer.

 

I'm waiting to see what the more to the story is, like all of you! I thought 6 popcorn eating smileys was just over the top, so I am using old fashioned werds.

 

Anything tricky in swapping it out?

 

Nope. Just get a pitman puller to pop the joints off the lca and you'll be good. Shouldn't take more then an hour for both.

 

Upper ball joint looks to be a more arduous task - have to pull the knuckle, yeah? And since I have manual hubs, that means tearing down that hub, right? I don't see cracking or leaking on my uppers, just getting mentally prepared for that eventuality.

 

Ha! What a douche bag.

 

Huh?

You don't have to take the upper off..

And I'm not totally sure how to change a cv on manual hubs but you should just have to disconnect the cv from the spindle. Then when you take out the 4 bolts on the bottom that hold the LBJ onto the spindle. You just swing the spindle out of the way.

 

Right, not talking about doing that for the lbj job, just a future job of replacing the upper ball joint.