ball joints

[FRANKENSTEINC10]

I was "shopping" around the other night on eBay of course and found a complete set of upper and lower ball joints for around $50 shipped. at the local O'Reilly 50 bucks gets me 1 upper ball joint. is the cheap set ok to use or should I fork over $200 for the O'Reilly set??

[Fleetline Fever]

Some times on eBay you get what you pay for. If these ball joints fail while going down the highway it could be catastrophic to both you and your truck. Is that really worth saving $150.00? eBay is good for hard to find vintage & NOS parts, not something you can get at your local auto parts store.

[Ironangel]

Originally Posted by Fleetline Fever

Some times on eBay you get what you pay for. If these ball joints fail while going down the highway it could be catastrophic to both you and your truck. Is that really worth saving $150.00? eBay is good for hard to find vintage & NOS parts, not something you can get at your local auto parts store.

+1! Good advice! Try NAPA and I would suspect one of the board venders would have the ball joints as well. I think I paid like $80 bucks for mine and another $50 to have the lowers pressed in...

[NobleSix]

i dont mean to jack your thread, but i just replaced my uppers and lowers, along with the inner and outer tie rods. i would have spent the extra money and got moog or better, but i had a bad feeling that either a vital part or tool was going to break. i sourced everything from autozone. i could buy one or two parts at a time and after 5 purchases of $20 you get a sort of store credit for $20. spend $100, get $20 free. it seemed logical to me, especially after having gone to "oh really's" and comparing the two different parts in my hand.

autozone has a sort of 2 piece design where the grease boot goes over the taper after the joint is installed, but before installing the spindle. oh really's is sort of an all in one type, where the grease boot seems to be alot smaller and perhaps form fitting, and is clamped on with what looks like some bailing wire. all you have to do is press it in, install the spindle, add zerk + grease and bobs your uncle.

so we fought with the driver side for a few hours and sure enough, mr. murphy paid us a visit. the harbor freight balljoint tool actually bent at about a 45*. swell. so buddy guy was working on the pass. side and everything was smooth up untill the last bolt was tight and he notices the grease boot on the floor. poop. we think the spindle will just pop right off....nope. BFH + pickle fork....nope. so its the middle of the damn night and ive got a mangled lbj and limp home on it. the next day got an oh really lbj cause the zone was out of them and i was impatient.exchange the harbor freight tool for a non bent one and it all swapped out in about 45 min.

if i bought the moog joint id be out about $60 and tax, @ $30 each. so far its around 15 for the zone and 13 for oh really. im happier knowing while i did indeed throw money away as it were, it was substantially less than what it could have been. be that as it may, thats not to say im not going to go moog in the future. for right now she sees less than 1k mi. a year. oh, that P O S clamp kit is going back to HF. again not trying to thread jack. better to break a cheap part than an expensive part, and its even better breaking no parts at all.

[Nathans71]

Check out Rock Auto. I like the Raybestos Professional grade.

[hugger6933]

If there is any way see if you can find out who made the ball joints. All of the above is true about the cheaper stuff that is a danger. Sometime though, the companies like MOOG and others with the top names will sell the same joints in different boxes to jobbers or stores brands with cheap prices in mind. I have seen times when there would be 3 price levels on a part, $15 $25 and $45 all with the same part number just different prefixes.

[FRANKENSTEINC10]

thanks fellas. I noticed that she quoted me for the higher level components, so it will be around 90 for all.