Quote:
Originally Posted by 19963.4lsr5
To me the lower ball joint failure is from rust seizing the ball and it breaking the stem from the ball.
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There is a TON of very detailed information on this very forum about WHY they are a failure item in this particular application. It has to do with design of the system. But failures come from the bolts as often as not (though, this seems to be mostly attributed to reusing them).
I replaced mine at 190k (when I bought the 4r form the original owner, non-lifted, most off-road was a gravel driveway), "felt" fine with the FSM test... boots looked fine when installed.... both were torn and holding water once removed with a lot of rust and movement evident. 200k miles is the outside limit for a Street-only, non-lifted truck (or rather, 200k miles/20 years... if you do 200k miles in 10 years, you might be fine).
At this point, any original-installed ball joints should be replaced simply due to AGE. Past that, it's a study in use-case. I'll probably stick to 15 years/150k miles myself for a 99% street/non-lifted use (and since I've only put ~5k miles on it in the past year, that'll be a time-related replacement).
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'99 Limited 4x4, Millenium Silver ~
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