Aftermarket ball joints

Gotcha. kind of a newbie to the lift dept. know all the bilstein setups but not much on the ucas. My lil bro has an access cab 01 Trd and put 883s up front and the camber is stupid. Tires go bald like crazy. I’m looking to do 1.5-2” all around with 881s and an AAL in the rear for now

 

It really isnt had to do. Bottom ones are super easy and the upper ones you jus give them a good blow with a hammer and they pop out. Getting the upper ones in you will need a tool which as mentioned above only $15 at harbor freight

 

I’ve heard of this on a thread before. if that’s the case then 1.5-2” won’t be a prob I’m guessing?

 

881s and 5100 shouldn't need new UCAs.

 

OP i just realized you are talking about 881s with 5100s. I have toytec coils so i cant speak for the 881s. But just keep in mind if you add a winch or armor you may want to go with a stiffer coil or else its gonna sag from the added weight up front.

 

That depends on the lift.

For 2.5" or under, you don't. Some even at 3", like the OP, don't need UCAs. Some do though. Best SOP if to lift it and get it aligned. If you can't get the factory numbers, then time for UCAs.

 

Moog????!!!!!!



j/k

I ran those for several years, too. I think I had them for 6 years by the time I "upgraded" to the 555's I have now. They seemed perfectly fine when I took them off, I just replaced them because I was doing a whole front end refresh. The 555's were ~$20 more a piece, and the fit/finish was markedly better than my moogs.

 

Go with the OEM lbj, I used aftermarket and the passenger side failed recently with around 30,000 miles on them. Wound up having to replace the LBJ, cv axle, and tie rod end. Lucky for me it happened at low speed. I got two OEM replacements from McGeorge Toyota for around $268 (I think).

 

I went with Toyota lbj and 555 upper ball joints. Just google Tacoma lower ball joint failure, and you'll find enough pics to convince you that genuine toyota lower ball joints are the way to go.

Edit, I forgot that I sold my 555 to my next door neighbor. His passenger side upper failed on a used truck he had just bought. I told him right away to change them out, both uppers and lowers, but he waited too long. Truck had 240k miles with all original front end parts. So I ordered some toyota uppers to match my lowers. but for now, my uppers are still looking good at 140k miles, no play, no movement that I can see, but they will get changed out at the first chance.

 

Whatever ball joint you use don't expect them to last 100k miles without keeping an eye on them and checking how they are holding up. It's not just the ball joint that fails but also the bolts can back themselves out and shear off causing failure.

 

Yea def wise advice. Especially adding a lift puts more wear on them as well. My passenger side shock in the front is blown showing fluid, so there is a lean that the front end has already and the boots on the BJs seem really worn. Bought the truck in June so no idea how long it’s been blown but it was like that when I got it.

 

Yep a family member of mine has his give out at high speed and royally screwed up the fender on his passenger side, the door doesn’t even close right anymore. His truck was my first first gen so there’s some attachment seeing it all banged up. Moral of the story, if the person doesn’t buy it they don’t care for it the same as you would.

 

Blue loctite on the four spindle bolts, then torqued to spec should rule out them backing themselves out, no?

 

It should but you never know. I always would check on them every oil change.

 

How do you usually check the joint itself?

 

Once jacked, grab the wheel and check for play. Can also use a pry bar near the joint and check there.

 

I spent about $240 on OEM lowers for my 2002. I think the uppers were an additional 85 for both.

 

Yeah, and if you google "fake moon landing" you'll be convinced NASA never landed on the moon if you only looked at those results.

While the LBJs are an "issue", I don't think it's nearly the issue that it's played out to be. Everyone has an anecdote, and we've all seen pics of google images results, but the plural of anecdote is not "data." You have to think about the percentage of those failures relative the total number of Tacomas on the road. Of the many hundreds of thousands of 1st gens that were sold, very few were taken down by BJ failures, and many of those are simply user error (i.e. not inspecting them for play, or over tightening the bolts, etc...).

Toyota did have a recall on the early LBJs, which was a qa/qc issue. If it were really as dire as people make it out to be, Toyota would have been forced into a redesign far earlier than a decade later with the 2nd gen.

 

I think Toyota calls for a special service tool to check it. And the spec for slop is extremely small, to the point that if you detect ANY slop (i.e. with a prybar), the joint is way out of spec and should be replaced.

The other method is that if you see the boot is leaking, just replace it.

 

This is not true, nor has ever been true since people started lifting Tacomas. In-fact, almost no one added a UCA to their lifted Tacoma until the desert guys wanted better control of their caster. I'm sitting around 2.75" of lift without an aftermarket UCA.