Ball Joints: latest thinking?

[ntsqd]

I have maybe 10,000 miles on the Mevotech TTX BJ's under the front of the FSB. Not all of them have been kind miles. The RS pair are just starting to have some play in them. Is there a better option, or are they as good as it gets?

 

[1969]

On my Gen 1 Raptor I put the premium Moog joints on it and they are needing replacing after ~25k miles. Everyone warned me about Moog quality going downhill, but I didn’t think it was gonna be that bad. Luckily I can still get Motorcraft joints for that.
Curious to see what other people recommend.

 

[DirtDonk]

Can't tell you what a good brand is anymore. Or if they even exist.
It's been probably 20 years now, since I started noticing new ball-joints not lasting very long. That's assuming that they were even good out of the box!
Most of them did not even fit like originals, so were hard to get down to that final adjustment step in a satisfactory matter.
Those that did, seem to wear out with fewer miles than in the old days. Old days, when we used to regularly get 100k miles out of them before you could even start to detect excess play.
Nowadays, 25k does seem to be kind of common.

Hopefully I'm wrong just because my "sample" number is relatively low, compared to the industry as a whole.

Paul

 

[Yeller]

Running spicer NOS on the J Truck on one side and new stock spicer on the other, both are holding strong at 70k.

 

[ntsqd]

Haven't been able to find Spicers for the TTB (probably don't know where to look). Did find that Yukon makes or sells a HD set.
https://www.yukongear.com/products/...del/Bronco/Drive/4WD/Differential/diff-000130
Going to give them a try. Yukon says that the Red-I grease that I normally use in BJ's is fine.

 

[Got4wd]

I’ve had the worst luck with spicers. The ones I have gotten have been super loose. Back in the day, Ya I’m getting older, they were always top notch. I did find nos and they were good and tight

 

[Dylan_Shaffer]

Not exactly a ball joint, but similar architecture. Had a mevotech tie rod fail on my truck a week after replacement. Won’t be purchasing any more mevotech products. Got lucky it was in a parking lot, was on the freeway minutes prior.

 

[ntsqd]

For a friend's LBZ we created a whole new center-link from some 4130 bar stock that used 1T TREs instead of those end-loaded joints that like to fail like that.

 

[Yeller]

I’d be trying the Yukon’s in your application for sure. As a side note, have a complete out fitting of Detroit Axle parts in the Exploder, so far so good, and I don’t expect anyone’s parts to live long and happy in that.