My truck failed inspection because of a bad ball joint :o . So, I'm going to change them all, but since I have it up, any recommendations on what I should change while I'm "in there".

If you look at my sig below, it's got some miles on it, and I just bought it at 160K miles, so I'm going to assume NOTHING has been done.

So, thoughts? Any recommendations on brands? etc.?

 

I'm in the same situation, I've got 183K on mine and it needs upper ball joints which from what I understand are part of the upper control arm, I have heard that you can drill out the rivets and replace the ball joint but I can get both left and right control arms with the ball joints in them for 112 plus tax from Autozone. Any thoughts ?

 

Get some Moog ball joints, they are greaseable, theyll last much longer than the non-greaseable ones.

If you havent looked, check your brakes, tie rods, anything on the suspension...

 

$112 both sides is not bad. I paid around $120 for left and right uppers with control arm Moogs with grease fittings from O'Reilly. As stated you probably want to check brakes, lower ball joints, tie rod ends as well since you will have the tires off and the truck on blocks. The uppers are pretty easy to do, the lowers can be a bear with usually having to resort to pounding them out with a BFH.

 

Is it pretty straight forward to replace the control arms ? I did a search on "how to " with no results