Tuff Country Ball Joint UCA Review (Updated w/ specs vs JBA and OEM)

[Jetboy]

I bought a set of Tuff Country UCA's for my 4runner. Just thought I'd throw a review out there because there aren't many. I prefer ball joints over uniballs and they're local to me so I bought a set (through a vendor). Not much help on the customer service end though.

Short story - they don't fit very well. I would pass on them.

They're shared with a Tacoma so the ball joint is the correct taper but the wrong diameter so you'll have to add some washers to get the taper to seat before bottoming the castle nut. Okay - not a big deal. You need to add about 3-4mm worth of washers (two thick washers) to correct this issue.

Then came the alignment. I'm lifted at 2.5 inches or so up front. 22 inches from hub center to fender height.

The problem with the arms is that they are too long, meaning that the ball joint is too far from the control arm pivot bushings. They do have caster correction built in - but because they also have moved the ball joint out further from the pivot bushings - the lower control arms cannot reach factory camber AND caster together. To get the lower ball joint far enough out laterally to reach near zero camber (couldn't get to zero no matter what on one side), you have to max both cams on each control arm. So... you can't also adjust caster anywhere. To get caster even to just 2.5 and 2.3 (for slight cross caster), the camber is positive roughly 2 degrees. And that's a big problem for handling. I actually had better alignment specs with the stock UCAs.

I spoke with the customer tech rep on the phone. The response was essentially "our arms are perfect - there must be a problem with your truck" and the recommendation was to get the camber correct because that's what matters for handling and even 1 degree of caster is fine. We have trucks with near zero caster that drive just fine. I called bull shit. Anyway the result is that I'm going to have to cut them apart and fix the geometry.

I also asked about the ball joint issue - and they said that it's not a problem because every one else uses a Tacoma ball joint in the 4runner arms. Which of course is also factually wrong. Some do, most don't. Because they don't fit correctly. Minor issue - mostly just shows a lack of product testing - or lack of caring. They have a 4runner on the cover of the suspension catalog for 2017. They have to know about the ball joint/ castle nut/ cotter pin mismatch if they've ever put a set on.

They might work at around 4 inches of lift. They don't work at 2.5 very well. It'll only take a few minutes to cut them apart and fix the geometry. But if you're looking at options that don't require fixing yourself - I'd skip these ones.

 

[DesertCanyons]

Tough Luck Sucker UCA

I'm reading all the posts I can find about UCA and lift options. Thanks for posting your review.

Why not just return these poorly designed "Tough Luck" UCAs and get a refund?

With so many other good choices, like the SPS ball joint, JBA ball joint, the new ICON Delta joint, why did you go with this unknown? What does it cost?

What is your dislike for the Uniball based on? Squeek? Exposure to the elements? One good thing about the Uniball joint, typically made by FK, is that it can be serviced or replaced without throwing away the UCA. If you wanted a Uniball joint you could go with one from Camburg, Rokeman, Dirt King, ICON, Total Chaos and others.

I just ordered the ICON Stage 7 lift with a Delta Joint in a tubular UCA. I'll be installing it all when I get it, in about 5 to 7 weeks. I'm very interested in what you and others may have to say about this UCA.

 

[Jetboy]

The price is reasonable ~$350. I can still return them. Tuff Country is more of a show truck company than an offroad company, but I figured how hard can it be to bend one piece of tube, weld on some tubes and a ball joint cup? Kinda my general thought that upper control arms are outrageously priced. Consider for a second that you can buy a winch for less than a control arm set. It ain't brain surgery here. And they're local to me although I've never been to their shop.

What I actually don't understand is why anyone would prefer a uniball over a ball joint in this application. Ball joints last for hundreds of thousands of miles. They don't break very often. Since they had an issue a decade ago the newer ones basically last forever. And they're low maintenance. Uniballs have maybe a 2 year lifespan. They're not sealed. They wear out quickly. And they're no cheaper than replacing a ball joint. My last 4runner had 220k miles on the OEM ball joints - and they were still tight. Why would I want something that fails every 2 years? The only problem with the OEM UCA's is that they don't have enough caster and they don't have the ball joint mount tilted enough to flex all the way without binding. The joint its self has plenty of angular range. It's just not positioned for it in the OEM joint. I'll take a Toyota ball joint over a uniball for this application without a second thought.

I may return them. It's probably just easier to fix them though. It's pretty easy to do and I don't have to mess around with the whole shipping and buying another set thing. I really should have just made them from scratch.

If i were to replace them - I think the JBA would be my first choice.

 

[Angelo]

If i were to replace them - I think the JBA would be my first choice.

I'd be interested in your opinion of the (recently released) Dobinson's UCAs too, if you end up looking around for others. No help on the price there, though.

 

[gm350reratliff]

Tuff Country is a budget mall crawler company. I've installed a few of their lift kits over the years and I've come across fitment and quality issues before. No surprise here to me. Do they still send the prayer cards in their kits? Usually you need to say some prayers when installing stuff from them. I would return those and go with some SPCs or JBA HDs. I do agree about the BJ > uni-ball though.

 

[DesertCanyons]

The price is reasonable ~$350. ...

What I actually don't understand is why anyone would prefer a uniball over a ball joint in this application. ...

I may return them. It's probably just easier to fix them though. It's pretty easy to do and I don't have to mess around with the whole shipping and buying another set thing. I really should have just made them from scratch.

If i were to replace them - I think the JBA would be my first choice.

I agree with what you say about the Uniball joints. That's why I chose the ICON tubular with the Delta Joint. I think it's just a ball joint in a metal housing with a grease zirk. You can lube it. It's kind of a black box though so who knows what's really in it?

The basic JBA UCA is about the same price as the one you bought. For $700 you can buy their supper strong latest greatest version.

I think you'd need a tight jig to make a good UCA from scratch with any accuracy and alignment. There's a lot of geometry going on with an UCA. The frame bushings have to line up. The angle of the bal joint mount to the arms is critical. The arm shape matters. If you were making 100s of them it would pay to develop a good jig.

It sounds like repairing the Tough Luck UCA is more work than it's worth. If you can return it for a full refund then do that and buy a JBA for a few dollars more. But I admire you for trying.

Good luck.

 

[borfoo3]

[MENTION=118321]Jetboy[/MENTION]
Why did ou pick these over JBA?

Been researching UCAs a lot and I agree 100% that ball joints are good enough with near OEM reliability vs uniball.. they just don’t seem to be as popular

 

[Jetboy]

[MENTION=118321]Jetboy[/MENTION]
Why did ou pick these over JBA?

Been researching UCAs a lot and I agree 100% that ball joints are good enough with near OEM reliability vs uniball.. they just don’t seem to be as popular

I like the idea of an OEM ball joint. The design is kinda exactly what an UCA should be. Simple. Accepts an OEM ball joint. Just moves the joint where it needs to be. They're just crappy geometry and marginal build quality. The biggest fail in design of the Tuff Country is the use of poly bushings. Rubber is a better choice for these IMO. Toyota builds them the right way with premium quality components. Just not for the lift geometry. Ideally someone could just make an OEM style arm with the joint a couple cm's back and tilted slightly.


After thinking about it a bit I decided to just order a set of JBA arms and send these back. Mostly out of frustration with the quality and wanting to make the manufacturer take a set back. And if the new set has the same results - then it means something's messed up on my 4runner like bent spindles or something along those lines.

 

[borfoo3]

I like the idea of an OEM ball joint. The design is kinda exactly what an UCA should be. Simple. Accepts an OEM ball joint. Just moves the joint where it needs to be. They're just crappy geometry and marginal build quality. The biggest fail in design of the Tuff Country is the use of poly bushings. Rubber is a better choice for these IMO. Toyota builds them the right way with premium quality components. Just not for the lift geometry. Ideally someone could just make an OEM style arm with the joint a couple cm's back and tilted slightly.


After thinking about it a bit I decided to just order a set of JBA arms and send these back. Mostly out of frustration with the quality and wanting to make the manufacturer take a set back. And if the new set has the same results - then it means something's messed up on my 4runner like bent spindles or something along those lines.

Sucks to hear it but I guess lesson learned.. I personally wanted to retain my stock UCA's, but am at the limit with the new KING setup (now touches the coils only at full droop). Heck even considered some sort of limit strap setup over going uniball for my preference.

Really looking forward to your JBA experience as that is the closest alternative for me as well. Hope it works out well!

 

[Jetboy]

So... I ended up swapping them out this weekend to JBA control arms. And I took some measurements in the process. There are some significant differences between the two arm geometries.

Also I did my first DIY alignment on an IFS truck - I couldn't get an alignment at any shop - they're all days or weeks out on wait time. Some days it's just a walk in, but we had our first snow so everyone is jamming up the shops with snow tire swaps. I think I can build an excel spreadsheet for anyone who wants to do home DIY alignments, but it won't happen today. Don't have time. My plan is to make a spreadsheet that all you have to do is enter the angle measurements and it'll do all the calculations to tell you what cams and how far to move them. Give me a few days and I'll post it up when it's done and working. This is something you can do with a cell phone and a bracket. More to come on this. It's not as accurate as a laser rack, but it's close enough to get it on the road.

Anyway back to the arms.

The big benefits of the JBA arm to me are the use of rubber bushings - same as OEM arms. No noise. They do limit travel and may not work great with extended travel. I'm not sure. My 4runner is a daily driver first, so what's good for me may not be best for you. The ball joint is not OEM style, but it's bolt on - so it's easy to swap, and it should be low maintenance. JBA standard arms use Moog brand ball joints IIRC. Tough Country uses Mevotech. The JBA Moog joint has a MUCH better boot. The Mevotech is a tacoma joint so it doesn't fit properly in a 4runner taper (the taper angle is right, the seat in the 4runner is larger meaning the ball joint sits deeper into the spindle and then the boot is all messed up. Plus it doesn't fit correctly over the joint. The Moog has a soft silicone type that covers the entire joint and comes with a spacer washer that pushes it up the joint to totally seal it in. Neither are as good as the OEM toyota joint and boot though. The Toyota joint has an accordion boot with a spring loaded ring that holds it in place. There's a reason OEM toyota joints last a quarter of a million miles.

The JBA arm has a threaded hole for the ABS wire bracket. The TC has a crudly welded on bolt - that is the wrong size and you have to drill out the bracket to fit. The hole is 6mm and TC uses a 1/4-20 bolt that is 6.4mm OD. You can jam it over and work it into place, but it's a PITA.

The TC bushings actually have a tighter tolerance fit than either OEM or JBA. The ID of the bushings are a near perfect slip fit, where the JBA and OEM arms have approx 0.5mm of additional clearance. IMO this is a win in the TC column.

Finally TC uses larger OD tube. It's approximately 1.5" OD, where the JBA arms are using 1 1/16 OD tube. Wall thickness is unknown for the TC arms. I don't think it matters much as there is minimal loading on the arms anyway - and the loads on the tube near the bushings should be almost entirely tension/compression. The bushing area is the weak link typically. I'd guess the two are comparable overall strength ignoring the ball joint its self. Interestingly IMO the EBA UCA's that I broke - had the strongest overall design in the arm its self if you ignore the total crap hardware they sell them with.

Final thought is that JBA is missing an easy opportunity to make these better. They should re-draw the outer steel plate to cut 2 or 3 locations to bolt in the ball joint. They could easily be re-designed with almost no additional cost to allow adjustability in the upper ball joint location just by having one or two additional bolt hole sets cut into the pattern. I also don't love the fact that they use a nylock style nut rather than a castle nut with a cotter pin. It's kind of a PITA to install with two wrenches to hold the ball joint in place while you tighten the nut. Also I think there is a safety benefit to using a cotter pin. Both probably work well, but I will likely drill a hole and use a nut instead the next time I do any work on the suspension.

And - here's some hard numbers on the arm geometry. The TC arms would be just fine and a decent value for the price if they would just correct the geometry and use a correct ball joint for the 4runner.

I measured with reasonable accuracy - although actually getting the perfect center of the ball inside the joint is tough and I'm sure there is some error in the measurements. However the relative position is close enough to show the difference.

In the pic I plotted the location of each arm. Green is OEM, Blue is TC and Red is JBA. The TC arm adds approximately 5mm of longitudinal adjustment relative to the frame (meaning caster) and adds about 7mm of lateral (camber - moving the point away from the frame). The JBA arms adds 22.5mm of caster and is approximately the same camber. The result on mine was that the TC arm could not get camber into spec and left caster worse than before due to maxing out the cams on camber setting. The JBA I have not had on a rack, but based on my DIY aligment I know camber is in spec and I should get to about 4* of caster.

The TC arms probably work with about 4 inches of lift to put camber in spec, but do nothing for caster. The shorter UCA means as you go up camber goes down. At 2 inches of lift they're not usable. They probably don't work for either scenario very well on a 4runner. Maybe they work on a Tacoma? I don't know.

Also just for further info - the dots look close together, but the difference is important. The geometry of the JBA arm adds about 6 degrees of caster. The TC arm adds approximately 1.5. However because of the other issues with the camber I ended up with LESS caster net. The JBA arms should allow you to re-center your cams and still get caster closer to 4. So with a lift I think it'll still be able to end up with 4 and not have to totally max out the cams, meaning you can actually get a good all around alignment.

 

[Jetboy]

A few comparison shots.

 

[AZ4Running]

I have some of the same issues with the Tuff Country upper control arms. I have the ball joint style and did not have any issues with the ball joint not seating without spacers. These do however have issues with aligning to or even near factory spec. I am currently sitting at +.2 camber and +4.4 caster, way to much caster. Had the same issues trying to align as OP. If you want less caster then you end up with too much positive camber, about +3. I wish I would have seen this before I bought them but I have had them too long to return them probably. My 4runner drives great but I plan on putting 285s on and will have bad rubbing on the body mount with any more than about +3 caster.

 

[gordonp]

I have JBA UCA's and am happy. Alignment last week netted me a very solid result:
0.5* negative camber, identical each side
5.03* caster, identical each side
1/32" toe-in, identical each side (for 1/16" total toe-in)

The Tech's comments: "Turned out MINT!"

Because I tow a travel trailer, and drive in the fast lane a lot I didn't want any cross-caster (allowance/correction for road-crown). I'm super happy. Before this recent alignment, I had around 3.5* caster, and this current, additional 1.5* is definitely noticeable and to my liking: the steering is a bit more "numb" perhaps, but the return-to-center and the straight-line tracking is awesome - I'm going to love road-tripping.

Just one more datapoint...