Update
This past Saturday I was able to chip away at a few more items on my maintenance "to do" list.
On the agenda: Replace outer tie-rod ends, Swap in freshly rebuilt lower control arms, add 3/4" BORA wheel spacers, and put in new LCA cam bolts:
Outer tie rod ends that I ordered from Rock Auto:
They're the ACDELCO 45A0962 Professional grade. In case anybody cares, these are actually a JDM part as you can see from the picture and seem to be of high quality. I wanted to replace these because the boots on the stock ones looked flat as pancakes. When I swapped them, the boot on the driver side was torn, but the balljoint was still tight. The passenger side boot was still in tact and the ball joint was pretty good as well... The inner tie rod ball joint was a different story. Definitely floppy. I guess those will be changed out soon. One item of note was that once I torqued the castle nut down to spec on these (63 or 67 ft-lb I believe), the fingers and slots of the nut had already passed the cotter pin hole. Oh well, I made it work.
The cam bolts I ordered from Rock Auto:
They're the RAYBESTOS 6161076 Professional Grade, which appear to be identical to the SPC kit that they sell for over $58. They're $35 here. You can even see the SPC stamping on the cams. I bought these as a precautionary, thanks to Austin who had just finished swapping LCA's and had to cut his rusted cam bolts out. I actually decided to salvage my stock ones and forego using these. I liked the stock design better, so I just knocked the rust off with a grinder and wire wheel, greased them and put them back in. So they're available if somebody would like to buy the set.
The LCA swap is very straight forward. Make sure you mark your cams before you remove them. My new ball joints are greasable. Before you press the greasable ball joints in, ensure they are clocked in a serviceable position. I learned from Bobby on this one who clocked his grease nipples inboard perpendicular to the center line of the truck making it very hard to access once installed as the CV axle sits directly over top of them. I clocked mine inboard but at a 45 degree angle. I did one toward the front and one toward the rear and they're both easily accessible. This time the castle nut on the ball joint didn't actually reveal the entire cotter pin hole once torqued to spec (103 ft-lb I believe), so I had to exceed that a little in order to pass my pin through.
So now for the wheel spacers. I'm running aftermarket wheels with generous offset AND aftermarket UCA's arms, so why spacers? Because these tires of mine are WIDE. 33" tall and 12.8" wide. That is causing me to rub on the frame at the rear of the tire while turning under compression. I'm also rubbing on the end and star plate of the UCA. I believe that happens at full droop:
It would rub on the sway bar at the front of the tire at full lock if I had a sway bar on there and it kisses the front of the LCA ever so slightly at full lock. Not enough to scrub paint off, but you can notice a clean spot every now and then from it. It may even catch the body mount on a rare occasion. None of this is extremely drastic with the exception of the frame issue, which is very rare and hasn't really presented itself off road. I mainly notice it when pulling out on the street onto an uneven surface. Causes the traction control to kick in.
Originally I had ordered longer studs and planned to run 1/4" spacers if these tires didn't clear. If anybody is curious, studs from a Toyota Matrix are perfect for this. I've got 2 complete sets of 1/4" spacers (8 total) and enough studs to do one truck if anybody is interested. I opted against that route as I really wanted something hub-centric.
The smallest hub-centric spacers that I could find were the BORA 3/4" ones. So the issue I found with these is that, while our front studs are very short, they aren't actually short enough to run these spacers. So I actually had to grind/cut down the studs in order for the wheel to seat properly on these spacers. Not a fan of the idea, but I had to do what I had to do. If anybody is running these, please ensure that your studs aren't protruding past the surface of the spacer, otherwise you're just snugging your wheel up to your original studs. So the issue which I suspected would happen with this is that I would alleviate all of my rubbing along the components that run front to rear on the vehicle, but I would increase my potential to rub on the body mount. Well this proved true on my first turn into the Mickey D's parking lot. It hasn't been back since, but I've repainted all of my raw bits to see if I get any new rubbing anywhere. We'll see.
So the idea behind refreshing all the ball joints and bushings obviously is to return some of the "tightness" that may have been lost. But truth be told, after 187K hard miles, she was still tight as can be. After all of this and an alignment, I can honestly say that I don't really notice any significant improvement. I'm currently trying to find a solution to the rubbing and tramlining with a narrower tire. At that time, I'll probably re-stud with the longer ones that I have and ditch the spacers. Really nothing interesting, again, just documenting for my purposes.
