Jump to content

Ball Joint Problems?


Recommended Posts

Posted

Anyone else having issues with ball joints? I have a 3" Rough Country suspension lift and have replaced 3 lower ball joints. The company that put the lift on for me replaced the first 2 under warranty even tho they were GM parts. They assured me that they have done thousands of these and never had that problem. They even do lifts for the dealer before they are put on the lot. I only have 78,000 miles on my truck, no mud riding, no off roading, just everyday driving. Has anyone else had problems with lower ball joints going bad?

Posted

Is it a strut spacer lift/level style kit? Like this kit? http://www.roughcountry.com/gm-suspension-lift-kit-199c.html

 

Sounds like extreme ball joint angles to me. Being that its not a higher end kit (if that's the one), it doesn't have any sort of knuckle replacement or angle correcting from being at an excessive angle. A good lift kit will have diff drops, LCA relocation, etc. to put all of the angles back to their proper selves.

Posted

This is not the lift. I cant remember which one, but it came with control arms and upper ball joints. I have talked to 2 different people and asked if the angle was too much. They both said they think the angle is fine. Hopefully they will take care of the problem today for good.

Posted

I have a 2inch level at the moment and my upper balljoints were shot after a few thousand miles.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Which level did you use?

Posted

Lower spacer from RC

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Same here (soon to be replaced by something better). I've seen others report that they had much better longevity, but I'm not counting on it. Was hoping you had an upper spacer and that it made any sort of difference.

Posted

 

Same here (soon to be replaced by something better). I've seen others report that they had much better longevity, but I'm not counting on it. Was hoping you had an upper spacer and that it made any sort of difference.

Makes no difference whether it's top or bottom spacer, unlike what every company tries to tell you.

 

I'm also upgrading soon. Just waiting on my order from MRT to come in

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Posted

I have a '14 GMC sierra 1500 and just installed a 2.5" RC level kit. When I took it to a local tire shop to have the allignment done they informed me that both upper and lower ball joints were bad and needed to be replaced in order to allign wheels. I only have 32k on the truck and the next day when I took the truck to the dealer they replaced the lower ball joints under warranty with that being the last day of my warranty. Re-installed kit and took back to local tire shop......still no good because of upper ball joints. Still going back and forth with dealer over further repair. Just don't want to have to take this kit off a 3rd time!

 

Posted

post-158337-0-35358500-1489575944_thumb.jpg

 

forgot to mention.....I only had the level kit on for 2 days and drove maybe 10 miles...Damage to ball joints were under stock setup

post-158337-0-35358500-1489575944_thumb.jpg

post-158337-0-35358500-1489575944_thumb.jpg

post-158337-0-35358500-1489575944_thumb.jpg

  • 8 months later...
Posted

Had to replace Oem lower ball joints at 63k with no after market lifts or levels. I'm at just a bit over 78k and now the after market lowers need to be replaced again. WYD! Normal over the road driving. 0 off road, 0 curb checks alignments done regular intervals. Just decided to level front then took it for alignment and found this out.

1512239060078.jpg

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Latest Articles

  • Posts

    • Yes they are a good addition to make the truck more visible.   I have the OE ones in the lower front corners. I added some amber fogs to the bumper from Diode Dynamics SS6 model and wired them to my upfitter switches.   
    • I had an issue with a new 1985 Z-28 some years ago. The 4WDB's were less than adequate when purchased IMO.  I had taken it in for small warranty services and asked them on three occasions to check them. Each time is was "could not duplicate on the service ticket. The warranty ran out about a month after my last visit and had to take it back for warranty rework. I again complained about the brakes. Well, low and behold, this time they determined the rear calipers were sticking and gave me a quote to repair. They had records as well as O had receipts of each time complained about the brakes while still under warranty. My dad was a life long body shop owner and told me to keep my cool and tell them that I wanted to speak to the GM Regional District Manager. The service manager disappeared for a few minutes, came back and told me they would replace the calipers free of charge. 
    • Towing a 2022 Lance 24 ft travel trailer with our 2021 GMC Sierra 2500HD, gas.  Loaded, trailer is about 6,000 lb.  We get up to 10 mpg at 55 mpg, such as I-5.  Pleased with the combination.
    • I decided to give it a shot and see what sort of a gong show it would be to a pan drop themed oil change on my 2025 gas truck with the 10 speed. All indications I had seen so far was that there was no way that pan was coming out of there due to the cross over exhaust pipe not allowing enough clearance for the back end of the pan to duck out from under the valve body since it hangs lower than the pan to trans mount flange and certainly the filter does. I never touched any of the exhaust mount hardware at all, be that the engine manifolds to Y pipe, the bracket on the side of the transmission, or the two bolt flange further back behind the trans/transfer case. I put the truck up on four jack stands as there was no way I was going to struggle with that lack of clearance under the truck. The truck was cold as it had sat over night so all the trans fluid had drained to the pan, so I drained the bit of oil that would come out of the level check plug at the bottom near the front of the pan and put the plug back in to reduce the ensuing mess after that. Then took out all but one bolt front and rear and then pushed up on the pan and took out the remaining two bolts and then let the front of the pan tilt and spill out most of its contents into a drain pan. I then popped the pan gasket off its two locating nubs and kicked it a bit to the left side so it was no longer on the flange of the pan to get all the clearance I could and managed to get the pan slipped out of there by swinging the front of the pan to the right but keeping the rear part of the pan inline if not slightly to the left of its mounting flange area and lifting the front of the pan enough to keep the rear part of the pan low enough that allowed the pan to "JUST" slip out without forcing anything. I installed a new trans filter and seal and as per GM instructions on this site I torqued the two bolts to that 44 inch pound goal ( they take an 8 mm socket ) In reversing the pan procedure after I had cleaned up the pan both inside and out completely ( touching the outside of a dirty pan and dealing with installing a gasket at the same time would be a disaster ). First I slipped the pan into place and yes it took me a while as it won't go unless its slid in just at the right angles, then once the back of the pan was into the area of the flange mount, I went and got the gasket and then threaded that through the front of the pan and feeding it under the filter etc and finally working it onto the flange of the pan and lining up the two locating nubs to drop into the pan. Then lifted the pan up into place and get a couple of bolts started and check and make sure the gasket is where its supposed to be as the bolts were being put in. I never used any power tools as I don't have any of the whimsy little drive guns, I use what looks like a small screw driver handle with shank that has a 1/4 drive on the end of it and added an extension and those bolts use a 10 mm socket as some times power tools can bite a person if used on delicate parts ( torqued to 80 inch pounds ). Also should note as per rules around pulling the add plug out first, yes I cracked that loose with a 8 mm Allen bit socket on a 3/8 slim head ratchet as there isn't a lot of room to work with there either due to the exhaust on the right side of the trans.    I already had delco ULV oil on hand and of course the quart bottle pump wasn't made for those small cap threads so I had to use some other containers that the pump would fit and keep transferring oil over into them so a wasted exercise there but indeed the small pump did work just fine as ULV oil is thin and easy to pump in summer time weather. I put in 9.5 quarts as per prior minimum recommendation and yes that cut it pretty close as once I had the truck ( off the jack stands so its level ) and the trans oil up to 167f , about 6 ounces came out but a level kit or what have you could throw it off just enough that it wouldn't be enough oil so probably that 10 quarts is a good amount to put in so one doesn't have to add more oil as when its hot I sure wouldn't want to be adding oil so would have to let the exhaust cool. All I do for warming up the transmission is sit there with it in park and rev it to about 2500 rpm and it takes close to 20 minutes to get it up to that lower limit of 167f, weird how it will warm up more doing that then by driving it, I am not real keen on power braking the truck to get the temp up there and don't seem to have to either. By the way I only have 9000 miles on the truck so probably not a very good payback on doing it that soon and the magnets had such a minor thin layer of fines on them so that was good to see and the color of the oil was a darker red then new oil but still looked very good as it should and I've not done any towing with it so its been living a pretty easy life so far. The filter is made in such a way that its next to impossible to pull out the filter media but there certainly was some fines showing up there which makes sense give the trans having to break in.    I hadn't really planned on explaining this much of what I had done since there are various instruction videos kicking around or I think so, as the gist of my message as that by fluke or what have you, for some reason my truck has just enough clearance to slip the pan out from the trans. Of course there is no guarantee that other trucks like this in general will also allow the pan to be taken out without messing with the exhaust as I expect its probably a crap shoot if it will or won't, I was just happy to find out that mine would work and avoid all the other struggling and possibly damaging things in the process,     
    • Do you fellas think Fog Lamps would  be a good upgrade for our 2024 2500 HD Custom ? As you probably know it did not come with them ,  Would you put in GM Chevy parts ? Do they get wired up to the switch panel ( Upfitter or whatever the correct terminology is ) on the dash ? Thanks
  • GM-Trucks.com Clubs

  • Popular Contributors

×
×
  • Create New...