SPC Upper Control Arms?

Holding up great on mine.

 

My SPC UCA ball joints are failing. installed back in 2020. They've been on for about 4 years and 40,000 miles. about 95% on road 5% offroad miles. Here's a link to the video of me testing them today. Anyone else having such early failure of these ball joints? i grease them every 5,000 - 10,000 miles. Both are shot like in this video. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2tbTccQt_Es?si=OZaW2PIUROiGustH

 

I’ve since moved on with whole set up. SPC’s are gone and will never look back.

Good luck

 

SPC is working on new ball joints since their old ones weren't the most reliable. I'd assume by the end of the year?

 

SPC is just okay, nothing more

 

I'm pretty astonished that such a critical component has failed so quickly. I really like the control arm for its added alignment ability which is why I bought it. But this is a safety concern now.

 

What did you move to?

 

I’m on extended travel Kings with dirt King UCA’s. Super happy

 

I contacted SPC about the ball joint failure. They have been 0 help so far. I asked the question regarding the early failure of both ball joints and if they think this is the normal lifespan of their product and they have been crickets so far... I cannot recommend these A - Arms given my experience.

 

The SPC's are great for their adjustability but both the x-axis joints and ball joints fail wayyyy too prematurely. I went through 3 pairs before I gave up.

Plenty of posts about it.

 

what did you move to? I may be in the same boat.

 

Accutune arms. Expensive, but have been on the truck for a year and 20k without issue. I was blowing through SPC's in less than 10k.

Downside is the non-adjustability, when I first put them on I was 34's with a CMR and stock size fenders and most of the plastic fender liner in place. Unfortunately I probably lost 3/8th's of clearance or so, which was just enough to rub the lower lip of the plastic fender liner/fender. So I went to the c4 fender liner kit. Gained a ton of clearance so then I moved from 34's to 35's. No rubbing on anything anymore.

 

Great info. Yea i'm very nervous about these SPC's honestly. I have a family trip leaving this wed. was not able to source replacement joints in time after discovering the failure. got me feeling very nervous driving this truck waiting for my wheel to fall off around every corner with my kids in the vehicle with me. esp since i'm loaded down with a FWC and tons of gear. Deff going to be doing some research on what to move to next. Not a good feeling.

 

So I got my replacement ball joint for the SPC UCA. And looking at it, they now ship a "maintenance free upgraded" ball joint. It doesn't have a grease fitting up top but is instead capped off.
Has anyone had experience with this "maintenance free" ball joint and getting better life from it? Seems like a step backwards to not allow it to be greasable. Although I'm wondering if I could just simply remove this plug and add a grease fitting.
http://www.spcalignment.com/images/pdfs/SPC_New_BallJoint_Flyer_0723.pdf

 

The fact that you can still get a zerk fitting and a boot doesn't give me a lot of confidence that they are truly sealed.

 

I purposely bought a new grease gun and the grease on their website that they recommend. Now this guy on email is telling me to only use "green grease" if I do decide to grease it. But that he doesn't recommend greasing it at all. I pulled the Allen cap on this sealed ball joint and there's white grease inside not green grease. I really dunno what's going on with these things lol