JBA Offroad Upper Control Arms And Suspension MEGA Thread BS thread

How is the

how is the stock suspension holding with the added weight?

 

Go with DirtKing or someone else. Give him another 5+ years to figure out how to make them dependable. Just now changing that ball joint and boot setup. Haha

2 sets of ball joints, and now the bushings are shot. So I can either buy the new design bushings and retrofit them into mine, add grease zerks, buy the new design of ball joint and boot, and maybe have a decent set of UCAs. Or just go with a better brand from the start. If you buy JBA's, you're just paying to test them out. But don't worry, you can always purchase the new designed items once yours crap out.

 

Ouch! I had already decided to go with Dirt King. I have contacted JBA five times now and no response. I no longer give business to companies who either do not have time or do not care to respond to customers. I have learned the hard way over the years! Besides DK hit me back in 30min and with a discount code. Choice was easy. Thanks for the info on your situation with the JBA's.

 

Nice. What did you end up going with from Dirt King? I'm going to have to pull my JunkBA's and will just buy a different brand instead of continually fixing these.

 

I have not picked them up yet. I am in the process of buying a bumper and sliders from Warfab and skids from Mobtown. Next project after the armor is UCA's I am only lifted an inch and a half but I feel like higher caster UCA's will provide better handling on the highway. If you are interested I can hook you up with the discount code. Let me know and I'll pm.

 

I will be getting the Ball Joint Uppers with the RED cap. Those box arms are really nice. If the box arms came with ball joints I would totally go with that!

 

Anyone have issues rubbing these UCA with 317/70/17 on a 17x8.5 -10/-8 offset wheel and tire setup?

 

Q: Does the long pivot bolt have to be loosened in order to lubricate the bushings?
08/10/20
A: No. There are two grease fittings on the top of each bushing housing. As long as you only tightened to the recommended torque, these should work fine. The bushing are inscribed on each side to allow the grease to flow across the faces.

This is kinda cool

 

Wow!! Those are perfect final numbers!! I hope I’ll get that!

 

I am all but certain my 16x8 wheel with 4.5" backspacing will cause rubbing issues with 315/75 correct?

 

They recommend 4" backspace minimum for 35x12.5 so you'll likely rub. My last setup was 16x8 -25 on 315/75 coopers and cleared no problem. New setup is 17x8.5 -8 on 315/70 Duratracs and rub at full lock, undecided if I'll swap out to SPC for more clearance or run a 5-10mm spacer. I hate running spacers, so I'll probably go SPC.

 

Same. I really don't want to go with spacers but they are cheaper than a new set of UCA.

 

Hola brother, how did you press the the ball joint adapter into the steering spindle??? I've put the adapters in the freezer, heated and lubed the "ring" on the spindle, have a rental press kit...going nuts over here...

 

Nice. Don’t have one of those. Maybe I’ll run to the tool store and.....wait a minute.....um...oh yeah... no truck DOH!

 

Does anyone know what kind and how often these need to be greased? Mine is mostly all street driven. Thanks

 

Ok here goes. I wanted to put forth some info on the high caster JBA's. I have a 2017 OR with about 149k on it. I just did the rebuild on my high caster uca's with approximately 102 k on them. This is the results.
As you can see there is no noticable wear on the ball cup. The powder coat showed some wear on the out side of the grease cup. Love the new design on the grease cup. Dry powder is a big problem out here. The ball joint itself looks very good. A little bit of discoloration and some scoring. But this is 102k very hard miles on these.
The spring and cap still look good except I just flat wore out the spring. They seem rebuildable to me and I'm going to try. These are the drivers side bushings, the look very good they just slide on and off the sleeve easily, because of course I thrashed them.
Now the passenger side. As you can see the bushing that was on the front of the front pivot gave out.

I have to say I'm very impressed with the performance of these uca's. I have thrashed on these unmercifully. I run about 175 miles on pavement and 85 miles off road every day. These were assembled using the provided grease and greased about every 5-7 k using Lucas red and tacky grease. Hope this helps some one out. JBA got my all my parts out asap even with all the Bulls^>t thats going on.

Customer for life.

Ol' graymare.

I had OG bushings that some are refering to and can honestly say I never loosened the through bolt to grease them and that could have led to the failure of the bushing, but that said I got 102k out of them and thats pretty damn good in my book.

 

Wow great write up! I should have mine delivered later this week. I guess they will have the new style bushings and the new ball joint boot. I'll post some pics when I am done.

 

Here we go again.
I ended up with JBA's for my 17' OR and WoW are they great!! Install was a PITA for me. I did use a grinder and cut the pivot bolts off then installed brand new ones that I purchased. The drivers side on my truck was easy to get the pivot bolt from front to back however the passenger side it was much easier to go back to front. Now before all the IFS experts chime in I did use Loctite on the pass side nut and got it torqued to the 85ftlbs. Also on a side note Camburg's instructions for installing their UCA's on the Tacoma say specifically to install from back to front and to use Loctite. I figured since they are a well known racing team and their engineer's probably know what they are doing I'll be ok. I have about 400 miles on the new UCA's and bolts have loosened yet but I will keep an eye on them for sure.
I do have the newest version of the JBA's and you can see the new proprietary boot design in the pics below. Question if anyone knows? Did JBA stop requiring a washer between the boot and the spindle? The instructions do not mention a washer there anymore and I did not receive one.
After all the nuts were torqued down, ABS/brake lines were tightened, and the arms were greased I took her into the shop for alignment. The guys at R&G Brakes in Southern California are awesome! They called me into the back asked me questions about what exactly I wanted and that was all after I requested specific numbers. I ended with 4.5 caster and zeroed for the camber and toe. The truck is amazing to drive compared to how it was before. I no longer experience bump steer on the highway and the truck tracks straight without having to adjust the steering wheel every freaking second. Seriously tho it was exhausting driving that truck to work and back. All the time I had to fight to get the damn thing to roll a straight line. Ok so that was a bit dramatic but hands down the truck feels more solid on the road. I took a trip up to Santa Barbara yesterday and between the Alcan springs in the back, the OVtune, and the JBA's I can say my Tacoma is a dream machine to drive!!! Additionally I was able to get a set of custom mud skirts for the engine from Gear Tech and they came out really nice too (see pic #2)!

 

Anyone experience rubbing from the coils against their JBAs after install and alignment especially during full droop?

I installed Bilstein 6112 /5160s for 1.8" lift and have a slight coil rub during moderate droop with the stock UCAs on both sides.

Thinking of going with the JBA Std High Castor UCAs, my wheels and tires should pose no issues (TRD Pro SEMAs 17", 4mm backspace, and Nitto Ridge Grapplers 265/70 17s).

 

I have the same setup. My 6112's are set at 5/4 snap ring position and with the stock UCA's they did rub. I did not even notice this until I swapped out to the JBA's this past weekend. There is a spot on my coils where the coating has been rubbed off and a bit of rust is forming because of the stock uca hitting them. No more issues from my end now and the 4.5 caster is amazing on the highway!