upper control arm replacement help

For future reference, AFAIK (I checked before I bought mine, and I'm 99.999% sure my conclusion was they are) the joints in them are the same design as OE... so you could just press new (more gooder) joints in them. You'd have to buy them, sure, but it's kinda less work than swapping arms... and you get joints that aren't crap.

Makes me wish I'd held off one more month to install mine. My gut said the joints in them looked like Chinesium junk & I should just put good ones in preemptively. But laziness (and the fact it's not really much easier off the truck anyway) won the day & I tossed them on as-is.

 

So originally we wanted to just replace the ball joints as the arms are rebuildable. I called ARB and asked them where I could source new ball joints and they said they don’t have a distributor for them and they only ship them from ARB. Not sure if you could find another one that fit or not…

this is the first issue I’ve heard like this for the OME UCAs. Maybe I just got a fluke and the rest are fine. Time will tell.

 

I definitely looked into what the joints were before buying (had uniball arms on my 1st gen, and I wanted something I didn't need to plan ahead to get wear parts for) and I'm pretty damn sure the conclusion I reached is they're just plain 2nd gen Tacoma upper joints, installed at an angle.

I don't imagine it's a fluke, the joints just looked like el cheapo $15 special joints... given your experience, I'm thinking that is in fact the case. Not meant as a damning criticism mind you, I'd rather have good arms I can put a good ball joint in than buy crappy arms that came with good joints.

 

Good points. Maybe I can look into replacing them on the new ones. We’re you able to find any upgraded ball joints that would fit?

 

That right there is the rub.

Your choices for 'not crap' there are basically Moog, and maybe TRW, Mevotech, or Mevotech TTX. TBH Moog should be a 'maybe' too anymore. Or if you really wanted, buy an OE arm & swap the joint over (which seems more work than it's worth)

There's really not any ball joint options here that I'd be like "yeah, I'd like to install those." Like, to the point I've got TTX lowers on my truck, cuz screw it, I'll give it a shot.

Edit: I'm slightly bored this morning so I decided to dig around for a 555 catalog (since their online is behind an industry login)... SB-3881 (upper) and -3882 (lower) fit an '05- Hilux... and they both sure look right. Hmmmmmmm... Edit2: My imperfect source for crossing numbers (I get some false positives sometimes) lists one BJ they carry that fits an '18- Tacoma... hmmm more.

 

From what I remember the TTX are pretty dang nice! I know MOOG is now kinda hit or miss… I remember when they first released the TTX, Mevotech had a rep going around with all the different ball joints cross section cut to show the improvements.

Unfortunately there are no brands that I know of that are considered bulletproof for the Toyotas. In the GM world we have Kryptonite which include a lifetime warranty and they are beefy as f**k!

 

1. Never trust a sales rep. I used to mess with the Federal Mogul rep so hard before Napa switched to Mevotech, he'd come around every quarter or so trying to tell us how F-M made our contract-produced chassis parts "so much better than that Moog junk" (which... they OWN, LOL)

2. Verdict unknown on the TTX. I can tell you the one lower I bothered installing so far, did not feel great when I put it in, even with copious greasing & moving it by hand. Felt like it had tight spots. But I'm rolling with it, in no small part because by the time I'd got that one in (bit off more work than I could chew in a day off) damned if I was pressing it back out & running back out to get another joint. Other reviews I've seen for 'em were mixed.

Hopefully they are good, cuz a) I don't care to do that again soon, and b) they do look cool & have great features.

 

Update. I got the warranty replacement arms very quickly from ARB with a shipping label to send the old ones back. Was pleased with ARB’s quick timing on this situation. I installed the new arms and wow, the old ones were bad. The truck feels so much tighter in the front end now. Hopefully this new set lasts…