My turn for ball joint failure
- Thread starter Castaway
- Start date
I'm glad I'm not the only one who went umm... wtf?
tinman
New member
x3...I couldn't even read what he posted due to the screen name.
Back on track, I'm curious: Have any of you heard of a lower ball joint failing at high speed? Most everything I've seen is them failing while someone was turning at an intersection or moving around in a parking lot. I don't know that I've heard of anyone's experience on the highway, 60 or 70 mph. Anyone else heard of them failing at high speed?
And for the record I replaced my LBJ's at around 175k miles, with OEM parts.
cj80cruiser
Senior Member
Yeah, there was a post yesterday about failure at 60mph.
http://www.toyota-4runner.org/3rd-gen-t4rs/104161-what-did-you-do-your-3rd-gen-today-126.html#post1194104
Matthew Garland
New member
Wasnt this LBJ problem covered by Toyota? I just checked my service records and Toyota replaced mine in 2006...free of charge.
cj80cruiser
Senior Member
Some people with new joints have still experienced failure but I think they have all been due to the 4 m10 bolts shearing. If anyone has replaced their lbj's with new OEM parts and the joint itself failed, I don't know about it.
IanB
New member
I have a theory that the stress on the LBJ is higher at low speeds than at high speeds, think about how much steering effort there is when parking compared to changing lanes on the highway (not to mention far less steering input when at high speeds). I think this is why the majority of these failures happen at low speeds, I'd hate to have one fail on the highway!
There is no foolproof way to inspect these LBJ's and know that they won't fail, change them out as preventative maintenance, same as the rad/tranny cooler. There aren't many chinks in the armour of these trucks, so just suck it up as part of ownership, and they will be good to you.
Castaway
New member
I had my tires off about two weeks before the joint failed doing a rotation to get a couple more weeks of wear out of the tires, checked for movement and there wasn't any at all.
However the day the joint failed I noticed a squeak in the passenger front side (same joint that failed), looked but couldn't find anything squeaking. Was not able to jack up and check the ball joint due to proximity of other cars and the fact it was a gravel lot (and it didn't occur to me at the time). Going home the squeak was still there, going to jack it up and check as soon as I got home. Obviously the joint broke before I finished parking.
Only thing I noticed was the squeak. Constant while moving, worse when turning. But you've got to be very familiar with the noises your truck makes, and have the windows down and the radio not turned up to loud, to detect the new squeak.
what year is your 4Runner? do you happen to have a link to a factory recall for this?
quicksilvr
New member
I have new OEM LBJ's sitting in a box in my garage, and now I'm paranoid that one of mine will fail before I get a chance to replace them!
rideexileex
Senior Member
Ouch.... that's quite a long install time. I did Light Racing UCA's, the UBJ's, and LBJ's, and the LBJ's were by far the easiest and favorite part of the install. 4 bolts and a castle nut. In hind sight, I do wish I would have bought new bolts for it. Since doing the work, I've read stories about the bolts themselves shearing. Just properly torque them to spec...
cj80cruiser
Senior Member
There are two different specs on the Internet....37ft/lbs and 59ft/lbs. Which did you go with?
I just did mine and ran into the same thing.
My Haynes manual said 59, the FSM I downloaded said 37.
I went with 59.
The Haynes manual and the FSM also disagree on the tie rod end nut- Toyota says 67, and haynes says something else (can't remember, but I think it was lower) It seems that 67 seems to be just about when the taper is seating well- below that and it's still drawing it in, so I went with 67 (+whatever to get the cotter pin holes lined up)
Do I need to grease the new LBJs after install, or are they ready to go from the factory (I got the Raybestos professional grade ones)
Incidentally, I'd ordered the four bolts from Toyota only to discover they came with the ball joints I bought. I just used the ones that came with and returned the ones I got from Toyota (to the disapproval of the parts manager!)
rideexileex
Senior Member
The happy medium... I thought I read somewhere else that they were 45 too, so with all the numbers floating around, that's what I did.
