Mid Travel BS 2.0

I understand where you're coming from, before going LT I swapped to aftermarket control arms because I do a lot of wheeling during hunting season and pretty much all my buddies can't get the kind of time off work that I can, so I spend almost every night 15-20 miles into the mountains with zero phone reception, so loosing a ball joint if I hit a rock at a funny angle or clip a tree stump is less that ideal. And the labor to replace the uniball is far less intrusive than a 15 mile hike at dusk to get out of the mountains, or trying to figure out how to get your truck up or down the hill your climbing when it breaks. If you keep your travel within the limits of the ball joint and strap your suspension then ball joint failures will be a rarity, and will more than likely come from a poorly picked line or driving mistake. Those failures aren't necessarily gonna be something you can predict by looking at the ball joints. Ask the 1st gen guys about that. They would love to have more uniball options and tend to have the most issues with ball joints.

As far as a constant goes everything is give and take. You can trade ease of maintanence for reliability. Whether or not that realiability is necessary is up to you. 99% of all people will never have an issue with a ball joint, but I've seen what failure looks like both on the road and in the dirt. I'm not interested in being part of that 1% and experiencing that first hand. Nowadays I just build everything to go fast. If it can handle mistakes at speed it will more than likely handle anything you can do to it slow crawling.

 

This is my basic approach to choosing suspension parts....

 

Thanks all, that last statement does make sense - it falls into the category of what I call, 'farmer logic' - break the answer down to no-nonsense, stone-cold logic.

Another thing that maybe I read here (I don't know anymore, I'm burning out my brain between this and a large project at work): I believe it was mentioned that people were encouraging lubrication of uniballs and heims. Aren't these (at least the heims) teflon-lined spherical bearings? If so, lubrication would be bad. From Aurora Bearing:

If any of those parts are steel-steel, why hasn't everyone replaced their joints with teflon-lined?

 

I think the dry-lube is safe, and helps the Teflon lined bearings. Grease is certainly a bad idea for Teflon lined bearings though.

 

As well as using brake cleaner or solvent on them is bad.

Weve beaten the lube subject pretty hard

 

Where? That's something I need to read up on. Searching didn't really lead me to much

 

In this very thread atleast 3 times weve discussed ball maintenance

Both the steel and flesh kind at that

 

Are you sure you aren't talking about the old MT thread? Search for 'teflon', 'uniball', and 'lube' and you only get this week's stuff. About the same when searching the entirety of the suspension sub-forum, unless those words are broken up into separate posts, which would make it very difficult to search on. Searching outside of TW, I'm still at odds. Read the green part from here on Aurora's opinion of the matter (they are the guys who made the part), whereas a member here just got off the phone with King and they recommend lubing the lower shock bearing upon installation (also a teflon spherical bearing). This might be case of application and or the assumed lube a person is applying.

EDIT: nevermind, keep reading that thread link I posted to the bottom of the page. Better information from SKF

 

Ive only been subd to this thread for a couple weeks

 

What's the preferred way to take a solid coating of grease off a uni-ball? Had a CV boot slide off (clamp failed).

 

I'm no expert, but I would just wipe it off really good with just a rag until you can't feel any residue on it. Any solvents might F-up the coating. Then coat with some Triflow Dri-lube in the drip bottle.

 

Simple green is a good degreaser. What part water/solution do you use?

 

Alex, your uniball uppers are still pretty new right?

 

Yes, they don't squeak or anything. I'm just curious for future reference.

 

Just hold off until they squeek (if they even start to)
When that happens head over to SDHQ and get either the small bottle of triflow dry lube for about 7$ or drop the 30$ on the can of Bel-Rey Moly lube. Ive had better luck with the Bel-Rey here in AZ in the winter and summer.

 

Welp fuck. I guess we'll find out how bad brake cleaner is...